Torture of the damned

Mother Jones published an interesting object, seen below.  It purports to be the music of the twist and the  screw: our tax dollars payed out for the most genteel of purposes. It reminded me of Gavin Bryars explanation for self-publishing, to keep control over his works so they wouldn't be performed in the then-pariah state of apartheid South Africa.  I can't imagine Rage Against the Machine - especially - being too happy about their inclusion on this list. Music, like any other form of torture, should be applied only to those who request it of you. Even though I, like most right-minded™ folks, believe that information wants to be free, I do think it is a somewhat naive misunderstanding of the value of author's rights, even moral rights, to think that it is all about BitTorrent-ing the latest episode of Project Runway. In fact, the greatest threat could be your government or the big bad corporations stealing your artistic handiwork to use for nefarious purposes, from the selling to unthinking consumers the means of their own destruction to the hired scourgers of our various Ministries of Justice, Peace and Defense using it to destroy some poor schmuck who happened to piss off the wrong tribal elder when the company fellows started doling out greenbacks for information. And I have some fear for my friend Frieder, whose performance previous to my opera this spring will be in Pakistan. Will his Pakistani visa's presence on his Old Europe passport land him a lengthy stay in a Navy brig, with cold iron manacles and cold iron door that even his most earnest magic cannot pass through, listening to the Barney Theme Song until he confesses to a host of misdeeds?

Psychopathia Sexualis

As DJ Bunnywhiskers loved our last tête-à-tête, she has invited me back on her show this evening from 6-8 PDT where we, that is, James Bisso, Suzanna Shubeck, and other of my dear friends, will read our favorite episodes from the Krafft-Ebing classic. Listening to the show in realtime is theoretically possible, either at PirateCatRadio.com or at 87.9 FM in San Francisco. However, as sometimes the chewing gum and bailing wire holding the antenna fails, and sometimes the hamsters that power the generators that run the server get a wee bit dispirited by the meaninglessness of their lives and sulk in the corner of their damp and dark cage, it may be easiest to listen to the podcast here tomorrow.

update: here's the actual podcast link.

The Laundry Room

After a hard day scrivening my meager attempts to add to our shared culture, I've found there is no better way to relax than to take the servants' stair down to the laundry room and spend a lazy late afternoon in languorous contemplation of the lacy underthings scattered about like autumn leaves after a blustery day. Sometimes, a particularly lovely article will catch my eye, a red chemise, a black garter, a soft night-cap, and an intense impulse will rise in me, and I will find myself secreting it away, finding it later amid my tousled bedcovers, an evening lost.

photo by David Papas

DJ Bunnywhiskers

Was on DJ Bunnywhiskers show on Pirate Cat Radio on the 26th of last month, April that is, aka the cruellest month. Pirate Cat is a pirate FM station broadcasting from the netherworld of San Francisco, a secret location just down the hill from my home. It was an extensive interview with a lot of musical examples covering my history, from the deepest darkest artrock past to the present. The podcast of it is available on the Bunnywhiskers page. Sometimes the Pirate Cat site is a bit unreliable, so I've put a copy of the podcast on my website here. The interview began with the host setting down in front of me a bottle of Smirnoff and some fancy vitamin water as a mixer. I didn't have my Gray Kangaroo or Brita 'optimizer' with me so I was forced - in the spirit of good fellowship and art and fun and so on - to take unrefined shots of the headache inducing swill, but I retaliated with a ball gag and 50 feet of nylon rope and modified ducks and wrist cuffs. On the 17th Jim Bisso and I will be together on the show to join in a mass reading from Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, a book that features prominently in our upcoming opera, a chronicle of my dissipation.

note: photo by Violet Carson