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Thunder Snow Storm!

Listening to:	Jazzman, Carole King
Reading:	SNow Crash
Weather:	34, sunny

So crazy, yesterday afternoon it started getting very dark out my office window. Then I heard thunder, then it started pouring snow! For about 5 or 10 minutes it snowed madly. The temp was about 40, so it didn't stick to anything, but it was very insane. This morning I didn't get up till 7:30 and it was already quite sunny and only 34 degrees. Still burning the furnace steadily and it's nearly May.

The dogwoods are so pretty this year. My apple tree was covered with blossoms yesterday, wonder if the freeze nuked it. Lots of bright pink azaleas are blooming all over motown. LUckily I remembered to bring in my hanging baskets last night.

Cheatfest this weekend, yee ha. It's a twanger, all old time and bluegrass, but it'll still be fun. If it's not too cold or rainy Friday night, Liv and I will probably camp. Since I'm not playing, I have to 'neak my truck in Friday night while helping Gail set up her vending tent.

I'm doing a 14 day free trial of Rhapsody, RealPlayer's digital music service. It's not a downloading thing, though, surprisingly. It's strictly a streaming thing. $10/mo. You can burn songs to CD, but you pay extra fees for that (they don't seem to tell you anywhere how much it is, it might vary per song). So far I'm fairly impressed with the catalog. They have Tommy Bolin, no the Teaser album unfortunately, but Private Eyes. They have pretty much Bruce Cockburn and Joni Mitchell, too. Not everything. I have a sound recording program that captures anything from your sound card, so . . .

Car accidents galore lately, it seems. Yesterday I sat on the Grafton road for a while, then passed a Blazer rolled onto it's roof. Apparently the driver cruised right up the steep bank toward someone's driveway on the S-curves near Mon Doit, and caught air and landed upside down. Might have pulled a dead guy out of that one.
posted by cat mcconnell 8:16 AM

Monday, April 26, 2004

Liberal Media, My Ass

Listening to:	Chestnut Mare, the Byrds
Reading:	Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
Weather:	52, rainy

Not even close. Like my friend Dave said, the media is owned by big corporations out to make big money, what on earth would make them promote liberalism? This morning on Good Morning America the 1 sentence about the women's march was pathetic, and bogus. Something like "hundreds of thousands march for reproductive issues, and there was a smaller group of pro-life demonstrators." I was actually there, and I didn't see more than 30 or 40 counterdemonstrators at the most!!! There was ONE guy with a bible actually on the mall spewing his bullshit about sheep, and there was a group of 30 or 40 at the very most on one of the streets the march went down, quietly carrying signs. And I heard on the police radios talk that they did not have a permit, so they were going to be disbanded by the cops.

Fair and balanced reporting does not mean that you give equal time or consideration to the handful of jesus freaks at a march of million people from every state in the country. That is absolutely bullshit. "Reproductive issues" is a pretty watered-down name for it, too. It was a Pro-Choice rally, about Reproductive Justice. Assholes.
posted by cat mcconnell 9:25 AM

Sunday, April 25, 2004

Reproductive Justice march

Listening to:	Air America Radio
Reading:	? maybe Snow Crash
Weather:	63, partly sunny

Liv and I just got home from the big marchy march. It was mostly pretty groovy. I shot some video, I'm hoping I got enough decent stuff to make a little film. It was a particularly tame march, from where we were (B30). There are nice big screens all the way back the mall, so you can see the speaker even from the peanut gallery where we were (damn near the Capitol end). But the loudspeakers were not working near us at all, so we spent several hours just hanging around our assigned spot, not able to hear what was happening on the stage. That kinda sucked. But we mostly had fun anyway, and I 'neaked over to the West Virginia spot (close by, it was alphabetical by state), and saw a few folks I knew.

Saw some bodacious shirts and signs. Wax Bush! Anarchists for Free Sex and Cheap Abortions, This is What A Poor Feminist Looks Like, Use the F Word, etc. The weather rocked, too, mostly overcast, a little sun but not too hot, no rain. We metro'd in and out, that's always fun for me. Saw the SWP'er still selling the Militant, a comforting long-time status quo. The crowd was pretty straight-looking, middle class, white, the occasional old hippie, the occasional young dreadie, plenty of Kmart shoppers, and Volvo drivers. A few churchie groups actually pro-choicing it, and a wee bit of counterdemo, but not much there at all.

An Air America guest is saying that Planned Parenthood estimates 1.5 million. That's a shitload.
posted by cat mcconnell 8:12 PM

Saturday, April 24, 2004

Redbud and Lilac

Listening to:	nothing
Reading:	finished Shadow, it was great
Weather:	mild and sunny

I'm at my mom's. The drive down yesterday rather sucked because of the wicked rains, but the redbud is blooming and there are entire mountainsides covered with it, totally awesome. Liv was sleeping and I was listening to a bonus 70+ mix on my PDA (plugged into my car stereo). Midnight Train to Georgia, Galileo, Black Water, Let's Get It On, Rocket Launcher, Midnight at the Oasis, etc. It was pretty sweet, all in all.

Tomorrow is the big women's march. We're going with mom, her brother Sam and his wife Eileen, and bunch of other wild ones. The weather is supposed to be nice, high in the 60's, no rain. We'll metro in from Huntington.

Tally freakin ho!
posted by cat mcconnell 2:08 PM

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

5 yr anniversary of Columbine

Listening to:	IGY by Donald Fagen
Reading:	Shadow of the Hegemon
Weather:	54, sunny!

It's scary to have a kid in school, still. Why did Eric and Dylan want to massacre? Why did the 9/11 muslims want to massacre? You've got to be pretty seriously pissed off at somebody to want to do that kind of stuff. I'm sure the corporations are happy that we decided to spend all our responsive energy in buying more stuff to create barriers of security between us and the scary people. But the scary people are us, too. Instead of being scared of everyone who doesn't look like us, I wish we could focus on figuring out why people hate. Solve that, no more Columbine, no more 9/11, no more gates and fences, and we can buy guitars insteads of deadbolts.

And it's 4/20! Yee ha. Around 4:20 I would like to be at the corner of Pleasant and High. But I'll be working. :( But at least I have a good job, and I"ll be getting paid to enjoy the day at Jackson's Mill with hundreds of seniors, hanging out in the sunshine. I'm doing a couple of presentations on avoiding the dangers of debt consolidation.

Here is a photo of one of the three hanging baskets I planted this weekend, and a bluebird that was looking for a place to nest in my yard about a month ago.
posted by cat mcconnell 7:49 AM

Thursday, April 15, 2004

posted by cat mcconnell 7:59 PM

It's one for you 19 for me

Listening to:	birdies singing
Reading:	Shadow of the Hegemon
Weather:	26, sunny

When was the last time it spit snow in the air the day before tax day? What is "yesterday," Alex? 1000 points for cat. Dang, it's cold. But it'll be sunny and warm 'fore ya know it. It's my mission to hit the swimming hole twice as often this summer as last. I think I only went about 4 times last year, sad.

I was in Charleston Monday for a meeting, stayed the night, and then to Point Pleasant on Tuesday. Dang, it was torrential. I had to take an alternate route home from Point Pleasant because the road I came in on was halfway under water at noon, and totally under water when I left at 4:15. There were wrecks o'plenty Monday on the roads I would take the next day, 64 and 35. I don't mind driving, but that was a white-knuckler. I stopped in Institute at Tudor's for a greasy late breakfast, and wasn't looking forward to getting back in the car.

But the 3.5 hour ride home was at least mae bearable by the great book I'm reading. I really like the author, O. S. Card. Cool characters and very interesting stories. I bought a copy of Ender's Game at Taylor Books for liv.

I finally got around to making some movies with my computer toys. I have one VHS tape full of footage I took with the old Hi 8 (which is a dead soldier, unfortunately, so I can't take anything else off those old tapes without borrowing some gear). It's all when Liv was a little baby, mostly around 4 months old. I made a few short movies, one with her and Snow and Spring, one of us camping with friends at the Jupiter Holler party in Lewis County, one of Lar and I carrying her around the garden and feeding the chickens and whatnot. I used the Arcsoft program that came bundled on my machine, it's easy enough and pretty flexible. Here's one such masterpiece. Spring was about 10 years old in this one. Is the audio too loud? I need to learn about mastering the audio track on video.

I blew off work yesterday, Liv claimed to be feeling lousy. She probably just needed a day, next week is standardized testing. I need one myself, so I missed the Law Institute meeting (the landlord/tenant reform or at least redrafting group). Lucky me. Hopefully that was the last meeting. Strange experience.

Tomorrow is an NLG meeting, a training on being a legal observer, followed by shindig and hootenanny chez Bob Bastress. Should be fun, I hope some people come.
posted by cat mcconnell 7:43 AM

Sunday, April 11, 2004

Anaconda Copper Mines & Wolf Creek Session

Listening to:	Walkin One and Only, Maria Muldaur
Reading:	Core CSS
Weather:	40, overcast

Last night the last coffeehouse concert of the season featured Wolf Creek Session, my friends Keith and Joan Pitzer with Alice and Mike formerly of Sang Run. Tremendous show. Keith and Joan played the first set, mostly tunes from their new album West Virginia Serenade. Sweet clean tunes, satisfying tasteful harmonies, great pickin. Then second set they were joined by Alice, player of Celtic flutes and whistles, fiddler Mike, and Fred the eclectic hand percussionist (djembe, doumbek, lots of cool bone and shell shakers, chimes).

Typically I can't take too many of the fiddle tunes, especially with flute doubling fiddle, too much repetitive treble for me. But Alice plays a wooden transverse flute of some sort that has significantly fewer cutting highs than a silver flute, and the mix from my seat was perfect. I was right next to the percussion cat, and he was holding back. He's quite an animated character while playing, reminds me of the perc dude in the Yellow Jackets, and the one from Clay (now Soul Inside). I got to hear mostly ambient guitar, fiddle, and flute sounds rather than what was coming out of the speakers. This may be the ticket to eliminating those ear-augering highs, because it was a mellow, groovy experience. The band also did a great job mixing up the instrumental stuff and songs throughout the setlist. If only Jimmy had made me my favorite Fruits of the Forest dessert, it would have been a perfect night. Maybe next time.

This morning I turned on Sundance again to see another great film. This one a document called An Injury to One. The film is an examination of the 1917 murder of Frank Little, half-Cherokee half-white, "the agitator" labor organizer of the IWW (International Workers of the World). Remember the Wobblies? They were a radical anti-capitalist movement that promoted revolution of the workers by any means necessary.

Butte, Montana was the home of Anaconda copper mines. Hard rock mining produces sulphurous acid mine drainage like we have here from coal mining. But hard rock mining leaches even more toxic concentrations of metals like arsenic and shit. The old pit there, a mile-wide lake, now read under 2.5 pH, about the equivalent of freakin battery acid. A flock of over 300 geese got caught in a storm, and sheltered in the lake a few years ago, the next morning they were all dead with lesion in their throats and shit. The NEXT MORNING. Anywho, the brutal crushing of the workers movement in Butte carried the seeds of the McCarthyism which would come later all over the country. The miners of Butte lived and died in atrocious conditions. Some would die in the fiery hell of a burning mine, thousands from tuberculosis from the terrible healthcare and cramped conditions, while the company made gazillions jacking up the prices of copper as it became critical to the war effort.

Quite an important story, and a good reminder that for people in poverty, all they have is their labor to bargain with against the capitalists who own all the assets of the country. As long as they remain disorganized, their individual power is negligible, and they remain little more than slaves. And we vote for that slavery every time we shop at Wal-mart.
posted by cat mcconnell 9:10 AM

Saturday, April 10, 2004

Check Out Passion Fish

Listening to:	Vanilla Fudge, Eleanor Rigby
Reading:	Core CSS
Weather:	38, overcast

Really excellent movie. I watched it this morning on Sundance. Takes place in Louisiana, always a rich place for any story to be set. The plot is about the intersection of the lives of two women, one actress who becomes a paraplegic, and her home health nurse. Both deal with men from their pasts, addiction, the culture shock of coming to Louisiana from New York and Chicago respectively, family stuff, and mainly helping each other get right and get over their bullshit. Good acting, nice cinematography, cool characters.
posted by cat mcconnell 10:38 AM

Friday, April 09, 2004

Resurrection is Pagan

Listening to:	I Me Mine, Beatles
Reading:	Core CSS
Weather:	43, overcast

In case you forgot, here's a little history of Easter: Long before the christians started plundering in the name of their savior, the pagans of this planet were celebrating Eostre/Astarte/Ishtar/Ostara. These are the goddesses of spring from Norse, Saxon, Phoenician and other communities around the world. The resurrection of the flora and fertility of the fawna after the death of the winter was celebrated every spring in the names of these deities. You know, eggs, bunnies, all that was about fertility. Also, Mithra and gods of the sun were considered reborn as the days start to get longer, and the sun rides continually higher in the sky.

It's beer friday! Yeee ha. This month we try Prime Thyme for something different. Later I may head to my pal James' who is hosting some role-playing gaming. He lives down the road a-piece, in an old school house.

Things are falling into place nicely at work regarding my efforts at outreach to the hinterlands. With about one day's work on contacting homemaker agencies and senior employment programs, I booked 2 multi-county trainings in my target areas and they are paying my expenses. Yeah, bud. More to come, I'm sure.

No more Bush!

I've got lots of flower seeds started, many germinated in one day. Took me 4 stores to find those damn little peat nuggets that fit into my starter trays. I was quite determined not to buy the trays again, I already have plenty, and plastic is my nemesis. So after SprawlMart, Sam's Club, and K-mart failed to satisfy, I headed to Lowe's and got exactly what I wanted. And my poinsettias are still looking stellar. I'd show you a picture, but of course Olivia used up every camera battery and didn't charge any of them because her current mission in life is to be a giant pain in my ass. Mission accomplished. Needless to say I'm not celebrating fertility today!!!
posted by cat mcconnell 9:05 AM

Sunday, April 04, 2004

Oh, and I'm changing my name to . . . c@.
posted by cat mcconnell 8:51 AM

A little belated April foolery The EZ Bake Oven bay for my dapper new PC, that's the ticket. Finally, somebody makes the brilliant capitalist connection between this IV we call the computer and our happy childhoods. Ummm, chocolatey.
posted by cat mcconnell 8:26 AM

spring forward in the snow

Listening to:	my fridge whine
Reading:	finished Speaker! What next?
Weather:	31, snow

It's 7:11 but it feels like 6:11 cuz of the daylight savings shift. And surprise surprise, there's a little over an inch of snow on the ground and even the road, and the trees are nicely covered.

Liv and I went to see the new Kevin Smith movie Jersey Girl yesterday at the mall. It was pretty damn good, I'd say. I hadn't heard any good reviews of it. It's definitely quite a departure from the dick and fart jokes of his previous Miramax films, though it does star Ben Affleck. A little bit o'JLo at the beginning, but Liv Tyler is the main chiquita bonita. It's a sentimental film, definitely begotten from Kev's becoming a father. I liked the music, though the technique of dialogue crescendo to a poignant moment - macro shot - fade up meaningful song, was a little overused, and a wee bit heavy on the cheese. But the cheese factor was amply counterbalanced by the signature Kev witty dialogue. George Carlin is fantastic, love that guy. And the little JLo-lookalike daughter is great, too. But the burning question, is there a Smith cameo? Guy who sat near us said he thought he saw Kevin in a scene in the video store, I didn't notice. Have to see it again. But no worries, I'm sure as soon as it's out on DVD Olivia will make me watch it dozens of times, like the rest of the Kevin Smith movies.

My pal Dantheman is back from his diving trip, can't wait to see the pictures. I believe this is beer week for us, so that'll be my chance. I'm kinda sick of Archie's, I vote for Rio Grande this week!
posted by cat mcconnell 7:25 AM

Thursday, April 01, 2004

it's snowing Happy April! Quite a scary ride home from Fairmont today. Took the back roads because it was cold and rainy and I wanted to avoid the interstate. Took 73 to Halleck. All good till I start climbing Halleck, and it gets whiter and snowier until the road is two tire tracks of slush in a couple of inches of wet snow. The landscape and trees were a winter wonderland. I drove in 2 gear, to be safe on the hairy turns and hills, and to take my time looking at the coolness. WRLF was playing a bunch of Eric Clapton.
posted by cat mcconnell 9:23 PM

Weird Vivid Dream

Listening to:	Let It Fall by Nickel Creek w/Glen Phillips
Reading:	still Speaker
Weather:	40, rainy

last night. I had just bought this gigantic old house, which was dusty and loaded with various and sundry shit from old owners, squatters, and neighbors. There was a huge swimming pool in this indoor/outdoor area. One set of neighbors came over to say hi. They looked familiar. First a young brunette woman carrying a cute red-headed freckled little girl about 2, and holding the hand of an adorable 4 or 5 year old red-headed boy showed up at the door. She looked vaguely familiar. Then her husband showed up, he was very familiar and gave me a hug like he knew me, but I couldn't exactly place him. I thought maybe we used to party and play music when I was in college or something.

The house was on a hillside, and though it was only one-story, it was kinda terraced in the hillside, so you had to step down one or two steps to go down to the next level a few times. The scene was mostly grays and browns, like a Mad Max movie or Waterworld or Escape from New York. Very large rooms with eclectic old furniture, some old and fucked up, some pretty cool. I just kept walking around inside and outside, seeing all these cool possibilities. But the roof leaked bad on one end, and I wasn't sure how to take care of a swimming pool. All very interesting.

Time to pay my homeowner's insurance, dang, it went up about 15%. The insurance companies are making us all pay for 9-11. Fuckers.

Snoop doggy dog, I got my old harddrive into my new puter, and life is dandy. It's totally not a permanent thing, for one, I want to rebuild the old puter for liv, and for another, it's totally rigged laying crooked and not secured in the new box. The new box is such a tight bitch for trying to work in. The 40 pin connectors on the ribbon cable for the harddrives are like one lousy inch apart, literally. Pretty much limits where you're going to wedge this extra drive. So I tried to network the two puters together for about an hour, no luck. The old one is Win98, but the biggest obstacle was the fact that I only have one monitor. So I rigged up the old puter to an old 13 inch TV, so the resolution was VERY low, and I could barely read anything. It kept saying shit was restricted, so I gave up.

Anywho, all my old data is accessible now, most of my necessary applications have been installed in the new box, and it's smoooooooth sailing.
posted by cat mcconnell 8:08 AM