Mostlybent

"Nature gave us one tongue and two ears so we could hear twice as much as we speak." -Epictetus

2009-07-08T11:09:42Z

Too true, Girls With Slingshots, too true.

Twitter time!

2009-06-30T04:03:22Z

00:47 Rule number one when dealing with my parents: plans are merely suggestions. #
01:15 was glad to have bed conversation with lovers. Topics ranged from the creation of D&D to karaoke and vocal range. #

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Twitter time!

2009-06-25T04:03:46Z

06:38 Two delicious, healthy discoveries: 1. cottage cheese with strawberry on the side. 2. Dairy and soy free chocolate coconut milk ice cream! #

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Twitter time!

2009-06-24T04:03:24Z

22:00 @XanderLibertine poor guy. Rest up and heal up and we'll get together very soon to floss out your mentals. #
22:01 @fairytalevegas Congrats, hon! #

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Twitter time!

2009-06-23T04:03:30Z

22:37 Danielle found the delicious mango coconut shooters in Flemington today! Rock on! #
22:40 Epic poly day out. Lovers came with me to stressful dr visit but then we went suburban crawling all over two states. #
22:45 The verdict? Burger king veggie burger = yum. Two books from my wishlist for less than $6 total = win. #

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Twitter time!

2009-06-20T04:03:06Z

21:57 Fountain Pen Hospital? Ah, New York. :-) #

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Twitter time!

2009-06-19T04:07:57Z

22:30 Crazy night. Passed a hitchhiker and an accident that had ten cops attending. This before i get on 80! #

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Twitter time!

2009-06-18T04:03:28Z

03:38 @XanderLibertine Whatchoo doing Thursday night? I has a fun, sexy, fairly inexpensive idea if you or you and your lady are free. :-) #

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Twitter time!

2009-06-17T04:03:30Z

10:54 Most days, I fight the good fight. Today, I went to Dunkin Donuts. #
11:54 Wow, Luvs, that was brilliant. bit.ly/gws2Z #
11:55 @weburlesque What about that spiffy Viktor Devonne fellow? I heard he was going to be there, as well. :-D #
11:57 @spookyhandle Yeah, problem is, it's one of those weeks so far. And it's only Tuesday. But I'm not freaking. Just staying aware. #
11:58 @spookyhandle Verra sexxah!!! #
12:16 Testing, testing. Tweetworld. #
12:18 OKay, not only have I joined the forces of the almighty Twitter, I now have aligned myself with LoudTwitter. w00t! #
12:21 Right. "Wow, Luvs, that was brilliant" ain't telling what the fuck I'm talking about. #
12:23 Follow linky to Luvs diapers commercial with an unexpected poly angle: bit.ly/gws2Z #
12:24 @smashley211 Hiiiiiii! #
13:07 @JordanaMarielle @reginastargazer Holy fuck, twisted balloons have come a long way. bit.ly/tqTIB #
13:25 @tessa_racht That was awesome! Do you watch So You Think You Can Dance? #
13:29 @tessa_racht There was a Bollywood number on it last week that was quite charming and impressive. bit.ly/17N95Q #
13:29 @XanderLibertine Pssst, whatcha doing this Friday? :-) #
19:43 @XanderLibertine Rargh. One of these days, babe, we will floss the mentals. #

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From the cleaning.

2009-06-10T21:01:01Z

Anyone want a calligraphy set? For free? It's still in the wrapper; got it for Christmas. Not gonna use it and Michael, the only other person I know who does calligraphy, has his own stuff and doesn't want it. It's very much beginner. It's got paper, a how-to book, a ruler, a pen and some ~~nibs~~ different ink colors. First person who responds here to claim it (and can make arrangements to either get it or meet up with me somehow) gets it.

EDIT: ISBNs are awesome! Here's a link to what it looks like - courtesy of Amazon.

And, go!

Sometimes the simplest things make my heart sing.

2009-06-05T15:42:56Z

Girls with Slingshots is that thing today.

One of the only good things about summer, really...

2009-06-03T07:15:09Z

Ah, Dar. How I love thee. Let me count the ways. Let's start at 6.2.2009.

WATCH THIS NOW.

2009-06-03T06:57:47Z

I literally wept and damn near pissed myself laughing at this.

Hard link for the embedded impaired: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA

Backstory: So, I signed up to get Amanda Palmer's twitter updates to my phone. Cool stuff. She twittered a link to this video on Monday, though, and I just got a chance to check it out. OMFG. One of the best music videos I've seen in a long time. The concept fucking hysterical.

Why Music Matters

2009-05-30T04:13:03Z

So, I was just reading Amanda Palmer's blog. She posted this, which she had forwarded to her by her dad.

Why Music Matters
Karl Paulnack, Director, Music Division
The Boston Conservatory

Dr. Karl Paulnack’s Welcome Address to parents of incoming students, September 2004

“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician… I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated… I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school. She said, “You’re wasting your SAT scores!” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite… Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture — why would anyone bother with music? And yet even from the concentration camps we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome.” Lots of people sang “America the Beautiful.” The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pastime. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart wrenchingly beautiful piece “Adagio for Strings.” If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie “Platoon,” a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small Mid-western town a few years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier. Even in his 70’s it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?”

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at 2 AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

“You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

“Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music, I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”</lj>

Hello, all my bacon-obsessed friends and lovers!

2009-05-27T16:33:40Z

So, while reading an old Hungry Girl update, I came across the baconfreak.com website. Do with this as you will.

Note: The site has a magical sound file that plays when you go to it. So if you're at work, be prepared in your headphones or turn your speakers low/off so as not to alarm anyone when a bacon jam starts rocking out. And....go!

A curiosity.

2009-04-18T05:43:08Z

Anybody out there have an iPod 4 or 6 GB?

Just curious.

More weight loss challenge!

2009-04-10T20:40:21Z

So, I recently posted about the weight loss challenge I joined for the first three months of this year. Since then, a few friends and family members have expressed interest in doing it if the opportunity came up again. I thought about hosting my own but wasn't sure I could handle the time commitment. I logged into LJ today and found that a good friend has started one. More info about the cutoff date to join up is located in this follow up post.

I just joined! Who else is with me?

It took me a little over three months but...

2009-04-08T20:31:30Z

...finally I did it! I lost an even twenty pounds.

Back in January, I joined an experimental, honor-system weight loss challenge made up of friends and friend/family-of-friends. We could all pick our weight loss goals for three months up to thirty pounds. I decided to not be too extreme, possibly setting myself up to fail by setting it too high at the cap of thirty, but also not too middle-of-the-road and only go for fifteen. So I went for twenty. It sounded good and seemed a good start.

The premise was that everyone signed on to pledge $10 a month and at the end of each month, whomever lost the most weight that month (as reported to the person who organized it) got the pool. Sort of like a weight loss raffle. There were challenges issued along the way to help us lose weight healthfully and not crash diet. One week was dedicated to making sure we got our recommended intake of water every day. Another was getting our RDA of fruits and veggies. Another was blogging a certain amount of times that week about anything relating to our new healthy lifestyle. It wasn't so much a diet as a way to jump start a whole new way of eating and thinking about food and my body.

I "lost" January and February. Other people got the jump better and, truth be told, I slacked off in February. But March rolled around and for a variety of reasons, some good and some bad, I kicked it all into high gear. By the time March (and the organized challenge) was over, I had lost a total of 17.6 pounds. 9.6 of it came off in March alone. Not quite what I was hoping for but a damn site better than nothing. And then I got the news that I "won" March! Which means whomever was still in the group would be donating $10 each to me! w00t!

But it's not over for me. I have a much larger goal in mind and I have overhauled my eating habits and exercise habits to reflect this. As such, yesterday when I got on the scale in the morning, I found that I had finally hit that twenty pound goal loss! And only a week later than I was hoping! I'm quite happy about that.

One of the things that's helped immensely is our newfound love of hiking and a gorgeous state park with wondrous trails and rivers and waterfalls exactly fifteen minutes away by car. I've gone to Hacklebarney about six times in the past three-ish weeks for hikes that last at least two hours. I've also started taking walks when the clothes are in the washer at the laundromat. I'm sure people wonder why I walk up and down the strip twenty times or so, but I don't really care. The pattern is nice: walk while the clothes are in the washer, which is about a 25 minute cycle and then read or write while they're in the dryer, for about 45 minutes.

When I found out I won the March challenge, I decided to reinvest my winnings in more fitness gear so I bought a pedometer and balance ball pack at Barnes & Noble (ball, pump, two workout DVDs and a stretch band - rock!)

I've successfully slashed the fuck out of my calories, eliminated bacon, beef and ice cream from my diet and cut back on processed sweets and foods, and shrunk my portion sizes. The bacon, beef and ice cream aren't for any moral reasons, I just realized I don't like them all that much and I could easily do without them so it's easier for me to say, "nope, not having that anymore." I know it's Bacon/Beef Blasphemy to many who might read this but that's the way I roll.

So now onto another twenty pounds in three months. There's no support group or specific challenges handed out or anyone to compete against but myself this time, but I can do it. Here's hoping the end of June finds me accomplishing that goal, too.

"I am warning you, Javert! I'm a stronger man by far! There is power in me yet..."

2009-04-04T17:07:14Z

Holy mother of awesome! George just linked me up to this amazing video of the cast from "How I Met Your Mother" talking about how they spend time between takes to entertain themselves. Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel are made of win.

I am head over heels in love with this video. And they are utterly lovable dorks.

mostlybent @ 2009-04-01T01:59:00

2009-04-01T06:04:47Z

Failures: First self-imposed short story deadline. But I'm still working on writing.

Successes: losing 17.6 pounds in three months.
Kicking my health and fitness goals in the ass, including regular hiking and exercise.
Keeping ahead of the 50 Book Challenge.

Questions: Does anyone have any recommendations regarding a general practice doctor, a gynecologist, and a dentist in the northern Jersey (preferably Morris/Sussex County area)? I'm looking for all of these since my old doctor/gynecologist is too far away and it's been far too long since I had a regular dentist. If you have any suggestions, can you email info to polyphonist AT gmail DOT com? Much thanks.

A happy place.

2009-03-26T16:32:07Z

I've said before that I wanted to go to City Museum, with something resembling a near psychotic-like interest. As if I need any further evidence of it's awesomeness, Jenny Breeden has now cinched it in the latest story line of Devils Panties. Thank you, Michael, for the head's up.

"Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future..."

2009-03-17T14:41:16Z

Books 11-13:

11. Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest To Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pie is Not The Answer. Seriously, another memoir by Jen Lancaster

This was great fun to read and also the most realistic "get healthy" book I've ever read. Highly recommended to anyone who's ever struggled with their weight/getting healthy and wants a more realistic and less clinical approach to the process. I love her voice, her message and reading this gave me a much needed dose of self-esteem. The book is empowering without being frouffy and encouraging without being all rah-rah. Lancaster's cynical, irreverent, hilarious and I can't wait for her next book.

12. Hope for the Flowers - Trina Paulus

My sister and I were talking recently and exchanged short inspirational book preferences. Her's was "Hope for the Flowers". It's a short read and mostly a thinly veiled allegory about having the courage to be yourself and not do something just because everyone else is doing it. A charming, sweet book.

13. The Senator's Wife - Sue Miller

A complicated novel about marriage, fidelity, and family. For the most part, I enjoyed it, but there were parts that just...took too long. Some of it sailed along, rife with rich and elegant writing, some of it...not so much. Just a little clunky. Although, I did really like the two lead female characters, Meri and Delia; two women at the opposite ends of the family/life spectrum whose interactions offer a springboard for the complex core of the story. The reviews I read of this book talk about the denouement that could be seen from a mile away. I, however, didn't see it coming. Perhaps I'm just naive or thought of much more elaborate scenarios that could've been seen from a mile away. I wasn't quite satisfied with the ending; it seemed too...sharp for such a sensuous story. And I wanted to know more about the characters since there's a 13 year jump from the second to last chapter to the last. I mean, we find out what ultimately happened to the characters, but I want to know what happened during the 13 year gap. Generally, while I was glad to be done reading it, I was also glad to have read it.

"Riders who trick their hoverboards by removing official tracking devices and safety governors..."

2009-03-07T02:16:37Z

"...risk serious injury and even death!" -"From Bubbly to Bogus" by Scott Westerfeld

A fifth of the way there! w00t!

Wednesday, I finished "From Bubbly to Bogus: An Insider's Guide to the World of Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld. It's a guide to the Uglies trilogy and I was quite glad to read it. It covers the history of the world the series is based in, the character name origins, the science and technology of the books and so much more. If anyone reads or has read the Uglies trilogy, I highly recommend "From Bubbly to Bogus" to round out your reading experience.

10 / 50
(20.0%)

"Uh-uh-oh-uh, I'm so excited."

2009-03-07T01:46:59Z

So, we watched the current Lost. I was very excited throughout the whole thing. So much awesome. Since there wasn't anything else I really wanted to watch on TV and we were done with dinner, I decided I should do some writing. I walked over to the computer and propped against the monitor was the "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" sheet music book. Michael rocks my ever-loving socks!!!

What do I want?

2009-03-06T08:38:25Z

It's so easy to name the material things I want; less so with the ephemeral, emotional ones.

So let's go with easy for now!

To go back to the spa again. Like hardcore.
A Rogue or Rav4.
An Acer mini-notebook. Ultimately a MacBook, but a mini-notebook is more attainable right now.
To see Fuerzabruta and Guys & Dolls.
To see Girlyman in April.
To see the HS version of Les Mis.
To finish and submit two pieces of lesbian erotica for the compilation.
To finish and publish my second book. And maybe one day my first book.
An Ovation guitar.
A really good video camera.
A nice fountain pen. I seem to have misplaced all the ones I used to have.
A huge feather boa. In green or purple, probably with black highlights.
A new garter belt.
A new longline underbust corset.
A petticoat.
Pettipants.
Chinese fighting fans.
A quilt.
To go to bed.

Hey, that last one I can totally have right now! G'night.