It's been sometime since I posted- mucho transpiring-iendo.

This post was written while on a Chinese flight from Australia to Shanghai to Los Angeles. I don' think it's finished but I wanted to make sure it finally arrived at it's home.

DJC


********

HOME, BY WAY OF CHINA


I am writing this at 38,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean in a Chinese jet airplane!

A few weeks ago, I made a big decision. I chose to end my residency in Australia and return to the United States.

Many factors played a part in this decision, and I can assure you this was an agonizing decision. I am not ashamed to admit I cried a river of tears, and had to force myself to do what I felt was ultimately best, despite my undying love for the country of Australia. Read that again- I had to FORCE myself to take this action. I had to make myself do something I didn’t want to do, because logic, not my feelings, dictated it was the better action. I had to ignore the frantic messages the emotional center of my brain was sending to me and take action on logical deductions, not matter how powerful the emotional input was to the contrary. While I am an intelligent person, I am find that one of my gifts is to respond to emotional “hints” my mind gives me, and this strategy has been winner in the past. Recently I decided that I had become unbalanced in this process, and was obeying the emotional, impulsive part of my brain over logic, and needed to dig deeper in the decision making process of my life lest I meet a tragic end.

The process of moving the assets of Mydnyte Productions back to the United States was a learning experience unto itself. Not only did the fragile recording studio gear need to be packed expertly to protect from damage, I faced the challenge of packing my materials in one-meter cubes. Budget constrictions mandated me to approximately 2 cubic meters of space. The problem is that some of the gear, in their respective flight cases, exceed one meter. My keyboard case alone is 1.3 meters. There is no way to fit this into a one meter cube.

The end result? They never told me that I could continue to build vertically! I had a 2 cubic meter mass that was 2 meters tall, by one meter, by one meter.



FLYING AWAY

After the gear was sent off in the ship, I made my move to fly back to the states. I had the opportunity to fly JAL and spend one night in Tokyo, and I regret that I did not take it because in the end, I eventually had to accept a 22 layover in Shanghai, China.

Arriving in China and being faced with the fact that I was to be there almost a full day, I had to make a decision whether to try and stay in the airport for that time, or get a hotel room. I eventually decided to press my luck and get a hotel room.

Now, this may sound like an easy task- but try going off in a country where NO-ONE speaks English, where the ATM won’t take your card, where ALL of the signs are in Chinese, and the currency and value of the money is radically different to what you are used to. Try discussing the price of a room, not to mention how to get to the hotel room itself. It wasn’t easy I assure you.

You have to understand I never dreamed I would be in China. I knew I needed to make a connecting flight, but rubbing elbows with the locals in rural Shanghai wasn’t something I planned on. I went to Hong Kong and had an 11 hour layover once, but I never left the airport. I wonder, if you never leave the airport, have you really been to that place? Well now I don’t need to worry: I have left the airport and went to China.

What pisses me off




Do you know what I hate? I hate when a website, supposedly in the business of providing searches and resources for people looking for employment list jobs that aren’t really jobs.

For instance:



JOB DESCRIPTION:


Position:
Video Segment Production.
An on-line Internship.

Position Overview:
Telecommuting positions available. If you seek a break into the
publishing or entertainment industry this is it. Our Special Media Unit
is seeking capable, multi-tasking video production candidates to
produce simple 'talking head' segments for a new web-series. If you
can perform basic production tasks on your own, scout talent and
telecommute using e-mail you can earn internship credit and gain a
solid production career advantage.






This is not a job, it’s an INTERNSHIP. Do you know what that means? It means it either doesn’t pay, or YOU need to PAY THEM to gain the experience. It’s a sham, and pisses me off when I am out there looking for a job and one of these babies come up in the search.


As a film composer, there is no shortage of people that want me to work for them for free. I am not lacking in that regard. When I go to monster.com, or jobseek.com.au, I am looking for EMPLOYMENT, not yet another way to waste my life. I have plenty of those as well.



Do you know what else pisses me off?

That fucking crazy frog cell phone ring tone. If you have that on your phone you are a Class-A wanker.



Another thing that pisses me off is people that say Brittany Spears or Justin Timberlake are musicians. If that irony isn’t self-explanatory to you, then you obviously think tehse people are musicians, and that makes you a Class-A wanker.



Another thing that pisses me off: Bank Overdraft Fees

Why, when you bounce a check, does the bank charge you more of something they already know you don’t have?

Does a bankruptcy lawyer really expect to get paid?

(Thank you Galagher)


That is all for now, you may resume your lives.

KATRINA EXPOSES AMERICAN POVERTY


By MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National Writer Sat Sep 24,12:26 PM ET




SAN FRANCISCO - "Let me tell you about abandoned people," whispered J.R., his voice rising above the sighs and soft snores of sleepers curled on the church pews around him.

"Those people who were abandoned in New Orleans," he said, "they were abandoned long before that hurricane hit. We all were."

J.R. (he gave no other name) spends his days with 100 others, embraced in the holy warmth of a magnificent edifice, 103-year-old St. Boniface Church. Sunlight streams through stained glass and gilded saints smile down upon them from the domed ceilings; the smells of their sour, acrid clothes and bodies mix with the lingering scent of incense.

This looks like an evacuation center — row after row of desperate people and their sparse belongings, a backpack here, a blanket there.

But this roomful of displaced people is neither an emergency shelter nor a temporary situation.

This is an ongoing, daily, chronic disaster.

Ordinarily the faces of America's poor are as hidden as their stories. But Hurricane Katrina has spotlighted the deep poverty that this country has failed to solve, a world of people who live without Social Security numbers and without running water, people who are too poor to shop at Wal-Mart and whose children go hungry.

Even as the economy strengthened in 2004, Census Bureau figures show 37 million Americans lived under the poverty line, a jump of 1.1 million from 2003. People living in poverty have, in fact, been increasing steadily in this country since 2001.

For years, advocacy groups and researchers have shouted the statistics: 45.8 million people don't have health insurance; 25 percent of American's blacks (and 44 percent of Houston's) live in poverty; 36 million Americans are hungry or at risk of hunger.

But before Katrina, few wanted to hear any of this, says Reese Fayde, head of Living Cities, a New York-based nonprofit group.

"You are made to feel you are detracting from something good, that you're not patriotic, that you're trying to focus on a niche issue," she said. "Poverty didn't happen overnight, but now it's as if someone lifted up a rock and wow, there they are, all those poor people!"

Rev. Cecil Williams, a veteran social activist who leads San Francisco's Glide Memorial Church, said he keeps getting calls from people who say: "'Not only did we not know there was so much poverty, but also that so many of these poor people were black.'"

It's frustrating, said Williams. "We've been there all along."

But in many cases, poverty is "invisible," said Rosemary Cubas, who lives in one of Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods. She said that on her block, four or five families share one-bedroom apartments.

"You don't see our poor because we don't let them sleep on park benches or homeless shelters. We just squeeze in, and everyone is overcrowded and underfed."

For those who have been living in poverty, and those who have been trying to fight it, the current air of surprise about this chronic disaster is both frustrating and amusing. For some it's also, perhaps, a glimmer of hope.

"I do wonder whether this is one of those moments where, as this country reflects on its values, there's an opportunity for change, for movement," said Olivia Golden, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington D.C.

The country could put Katrina behind it and move forward as if nothing happened, said Omowale Satterwhite of the Oakland, Calif.-based National Community Development Institute.

"The other possibility is that the soul of the country gets touched and the entire country is in a dialogue, trying to discover a common truth about who we are and who we want to be," he said.

Not that poverty is a new topic of discussion in America.

The first almhouses, or poorhouses, were built by the few prosperous colonialists 300 years ago "to abate the public nuisance" of impoverished early settlers. Periodic reforms were attempted, but they mostly amounted to handouts from both the private and public sector. Poor people became an intractable — and often overlooked — problem.

The Depression brought the problem to the forefront, and underscored the American tendency to look away from the poor. In the 1936 movie "My Man Godfrey," Irene, played by actress Carole Lombard, is engaged in a society scavenger hunt and is looking for "a forgotten man." She finds Godfrey, a bum played by William Powell, living on an ash heap.

Godfrey: "Do you mind telling me just what a scavenger hunt is?"

Irene: "Well, a scavenger hunt is exactly like a treasure hunt, except in a treasure hunt you try to find something you want and in a scavenger hunt, you try to find something that nobody wants."

Godfrey: "Hmmm, like a forgotten man?"

It wasn't until the riots of the 1960s that the nation made it's first real attempt to eradicate the problem. A federal commission tasked with finding the source of the unrest found that "chronic poverty is a breeder of chronic chaos."

In response, President Johnson declared war on poverty.

The government focused on health care, housing and food for seniors, disabled people and children. There was also a national Job Corps and a new Office of Economic Opportunity. The Model Cities program — which later became Community Development Block Grants — streamlined federal funds to community groups providing everything from low-income housing to dental care. Sargent Shriver was named chief of staff for the war against poverty.

"They were trying to get at the root causes of poverty, and the root causes were, as we felt it to be, lack of educational opportunity and lack of job training," said former White House deputy counsel Larry Levinson, who was enlisted in the war on poverty by Johnson in 1964. "All of this was not writing checks to poor people, it was offering them the skills and education."

William Julius Wilson, who directs the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at Harvard University, said Johnson's war "was the first major initiative to address poverty, and the last. There hasn't been anything like that since."

Initially, poverty declined and programs flourished. But each new administration dismantled pieces of Johnson's vision, which soon was criticized for costing too much and doing too little.

By the 1980s, the 'War on Poverty' was seen, by some, as a joke.

President Reagan drew laughter at his 1988 State of the Union address when he said: "My friends, some years ago, the federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won."

He went on to decry 59 major welfare programs and the $100 billion a year spent on them.

"What has all this money done? Well, too often it has only made poverty harder to escape. Federal welfare programs have created a massive social problem. With the best of intentions, government created a poverty trap that wreaks havoc on the very support system the poor need most to lift themselves out of poverty."

Reagan's idea was to spend welfare funds on education and training. President Clinton, who led a "poverty tour" from Hazard, Ky., to Watts in Los Angeles, revamped welfare programs; as the economy soared, poverty levels decreased during each of his years in office to a 26-year low.

Since George W. Bush took office, poverty — and the concentration of wealth in fewer hands — has steadily increased.

"In the quiet of American conscience, we know that deep, persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation's promise," Bush said, in his first inaugural address.

After Hurricane Katrina, Bush made the same point, this time noting the racial consequences.

"As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well," he said. "And that poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action."

So far, he has proposed action only in the area hit by Katrina, calling for a Gulf Opportunity Zone to provide tax breaks for companies that offer jobs, and a lottery-based homesteading program to help poor families own, rather than rent, their homes.

Alexander Keyssar, who teaches the history of poverty at Harvard University, said this country is no longer even trying to solve the larger problems.

"Thirty years ago, there was still a belief in this country that you could eradicate poverty," he said. "I think any sense of optimism or confidence that we can solve the problem has eroded."

That said, his courses are still popular, and his students are determined.

"Students approach poverty out of impulse, goodwill and a desire to do something," he said.

There's certainly plenty to do.

The raw, inner city poverty of New Orleans can be found in most major cities, from New York's Harlem — where a one-in-50 infant-mortality rate is comparable to Sri Lanka's — to southern Dallas, where crime rates are twice as high as the rest of the city.

Rural poverty is less obvious but just as intractable.

In the colonias of southern Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, you'll find tarpaper shacks, dirt roads, outhouses, unbathed school children.

People live like this not by the thousands but by the hundreds of thousands, supporting families on $5,000 a year in homes four times as crowded as the national average. Almost all of the residents are Hispanic, and most — 85 percent, federal officials say — are U.S. citizens.

State and federal authorities have warned that many colonias, built in unprotected flood plains, would be washed away in a major deluge.

"I hope Katrina is drawing awareness to our situation," said Meggan Snedden at the Colonias Development Council in Las Cruces, N.M. "In an emergency, our people don't have a way to leave the community and nowhere to go to. There are no options. People are living here day to day, with no contingency plans."

In Appalachia, a region where poverty is so entrenched, so intractable and so pervasive it is almost a cliche, many residents still live in century-old coal camp box houses, built to be temporary out of flimsy boards and battens.

The poverty in this region has been "discovered" again and again, and promises to pull residents out of poverty have been made for more than a century. During the Civil War, when thousands of Appalachians were driven from their homes in the mountains, President Lincoln promised he would come to their aid.

"The folks we work with don't really see they have a future, and as a consequence they live day by day," said John David, who directs the Southern Appalachia Labor School in Kincaid, W.Va.

Some Appalachian residents have continuous yard sales, their only hope of making money lies in selling one of their possessions. Many more spend the entire year paying off their winter heating bills, which top $500 a month because their homes lack insulation.

"I think the normal person would be shocked at what our daily existence is like," said Norman DePover, 50, who spends his days sleeping in the San Francisco church. "Just trying to find a bathroom, something to eat, to get a shower and stay warm, those are my problems."

Denita Jacox, a social worker at the Lessie Bates Neighborhood House in impoverished East St. Louis, said the general public has no idea what her clients are up against.

"This is a depressed community. Our families can't afford to shop at Wal-Mart. In the winter they can't pay their utility bills and they are very, very cold."

Nancy Cantor of Scottsdale, Ariz., who lives on about $12,000 a year, said rationing food is a way of life.

"Peanut butter and jelly is good. A can of soup. At the end of the month you cross your fingers and hold your breath," she said.

"We hurried up and made room in the shelters for all of the people who were made homeless by Katrina, yet we have people in this country who have lived for years, not knowing if they are going to survive the heat and cold."

At St. Boniface Church, J.R. pulled a knit blanket tight around his shoulders and considered his role in this country. Is he hidden? How did he get here? Why does he stay?

"This is a capitalist society," he said with all of the pedantic patience of a social scientist. "Capitalism means some people get richer and some people get poorer. In order for this system to work, for there to be really wealthy folks, you've got to have me at the bottom."

He pulled a knit blanket onto his lap and prepares to curl back up on his pew.

"This abandoning," he said, looking around the quiet church, "it was planned from the beginning."

King Of The iPods Calls Record Labels Greedy





Friday September 23, 2005 @ 04:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff




When it comes to the business world, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is no newcomer to the public bitch-slap. According to Associated Press, Jobs gave the record industry a stern talking to earlier this week, telling attendees at the Apple Expo in Paris that the major labels were angling to increase the cost of iTunes downloads when their current contracts with the online service ended.

The Applehead isn’t the only one baffled by this move. An across-the-board fee of 99 cents per song has been one of iTunes' biggest draws, convincing millions of online music pirates to live a more law-abiding life. Meanwhile, the labels aren't exactly losing money on the deal, since their chunk of that 99 cents is more than they would make selling a physical CD — what with no manufacturing, storage or shipping costs and less marketing needed.

Realistically, raising the price (which some users already say is too high) can only push customers away, hurting their revenue — the same effect labels saw when CD prices were on a perpetual rise up until the last couple of years. Jobs said the request for a hike "just means they're getting a little greedy." Contracts nearing expiration include those with Sony BMG and Warner.

"Customers think the price is really good where it is," he told the audience. "We're trying to compete with piracy — we're trying to pull people away from piracy and say, 'You can buy these songs legally for a fair price.' But if the price goes up a lot, they'll go back to piracy. Then everybody loses."

Unfortunately, while Jobs may totally be in the right about the record labels' wrong, he also has a business interest in keeping the download price under a buck, catapulting him from the moral high ground. See, its Jobs' job to sell these little things called iPods, about 22 million of them so far, to be exact. It made him about $6-billion U.S., not counting any iTunes profits. You know, iTunes? Which now owns the American legal download market, taking up 82 per cent of it and selling over 500 million songs since its 2003 debut.

An anonymous record label exec told MTV News that the standard price allowed Jobs to "become the Wal-Mart of the internet and he wants to retain that monopoly." The source said the labels simply want the option of variable pricing — an industry norm that basically means charging more money for currently popular music.

The source praised Jobs for spurring a legitimate download market, but said the Apple boss sold his hardware "on the back of our content," and pointed out that Jobs himself has the right and opportunity to adjust the prices of his iPod hardware.

—David McDougall

iTunes Cell Phones??


When Apple announced the release of the new iTunes compatible cell phone it confirmed for many people what they had been suspecting for some time. Rumors had been buzzing around the net for a while about an impending release of a new mp3 player technology, and many surmised (correctly) that apple was about to release a cell phone capable of downloading and playing songs from the iTunes music store. Furthermore it was rumored that a special version of iTunes would be released for this phone. These rumors turned out to be true.

When I heard about it I was less than excited. Here in Australia everyone’s got these great phones that do everything from video to pocket pc. I’ve seen mp3 players in phones cameras, video games, GPS, Internet, and more. I even had a Kyocera Smart Phone that had a Palm Pilot in it for a while.

These days, I couldn’t care less about mobile phone technology. I need my phone to make a receive telephone calls, and I do rely on the SMS capability quite a bit. My phone is for calling people, and outside of that I do not need something that can remote control my car, or communicate with the Space Shuttle. All I need is calls, SMS, and that’s about it. I don’t care about stereo ringtones or decorative wallpaper displays. Does it ring when people call? Can you hear people on it? Can they hear you? Then it’s a good phone.

I don’t need a mobile phone that has an mp3 player in it. That’s why I have an iPod. Sometimes I miss calls on my phone because I have the iPod on too loud and can’t hear or feel the ringer. I think that’s great. If I had my iPod in a phone, then it would interrupt my sole source of relaxation and isolation and I would have to take those calls. I don’t like the fact that people expect you to answer the phone like a trained Pavlovian dog. Sometimes at home I let the phone ring and I won’t answer it, content to let the machine get it. It drives my friends crazy and they want to answer it for me because I wont. I really couldn’t care less. Same with email. I have email on my computer. If need be I have a laptop and can connect via the wireless network at school. That’s good enough for me- I don’t need to be contactable 100% of the time, 24/7. That just spoils other people, and they get upset when they cannot get a hold of you.

The other thing I really don’t like is this idea of “planned obsolescence”.

When I was a kid, my grandfather took me out to his tool shed. He showed me a saw he had for over 60 years. He still used it and it looked as new on that day as it did the day he bought it. It occurred to me that they don’t make tools like that anymore. These companies are interested in finding ways to make you buy things that you have already bought.

Take for example computer companies- if they made a computer that lasted 60 years they wouldn’t make any money. Everyone would buy one, and then you’d be set. After they sold everyone a computer they would have to go into some other business. These companies sit around and ask questions like “How can we make people buy these things again that they have already bought?” Hence planned obsolescence. I bought my new G5 Mac in January and by March they had replaced my line with a newer faster computer. 3 months, that’s all it took. I bought the Logic Audio software at the same time and by February they already had an upgrade that cost $30 to get. These companies want to sell you the same item two and three times over. What a great racket! You spend $2000-3000 on a new computer every year or every other year, sometimes, like in my case, you have two or three computers. Then there’s the software upgrades. I got the latest Finale upgrade (software that lets me do professional music sheet music notation) in January as well. They called it “Finale 2005”. In March they came out with “Finale 2006”. Is it just me, or is this thing getting a little out of hand?

I know no one wants a 60 year old computer, but let’s say for the sake of this argument that if they could build a computer that was just as powerful and fast 60 years after you bought it, wouldn’t you consider buying it? Never in a million years, even if they could, would they produce such a unit. It isn’t profitable enough for them.

In this day and age corporations are out to make billions upon billions and top record profit margins, so they want you buy a new cell phone every year, and a new computer and a new car, and a new TV and a new video player unit (now it’s DVD, but soon it will be something like an iPod,..Let’s call it a vPod- you’ll just take it to the video store, plug it into a kiosk and download the movie you want to watch and you wont need to take the movie back to the store- it will just expire after a certain amount of time and the file will delete itself). The list is endless. It’s this great curve that just keeps building and building and building. It’s unbelievable the amount of money that people are spending on technology and the curve just keeps increasing.

But it keeps us willing to be “happy little drone workers” now doesn’t it? We freely indenture ourselves into servitude for this never ending stream of luxury that just gets more and more expensive. We commit ourselves into willing slavery to pursue the latest and greatest technology, which is priced just-out-of-reach, but not completely. It keeps us working and willing to slave for the profiteers, because people can’t just roll into some faraway nation now and enslave people as their servants anymore. These days, they need your permission, but it’s still the same concept.

So, you can see why I am happy with my little piece of shit Nokia cell phone. I can hear people on it, they can hear me, and I can send and receive text messages. That’s all I need.

NEW ORLEANS SPEAKS FOR ITSELF


Being an American and living in Australia is far from easy street. Before I moved to Australia I thought that Australians generally liked Americans. For the most part they do- but not completely.

Australians live in the shadow of the U.S. Through the Marshall act Aussies are required to broadcast 60% American content on their televisions stations. They see American culture constantly, wear American fashions, watch American movies, but when they try to export their culture to America, we snub it. So heavily taxed and tarried are Australian imports to America that most of it never gets off the dock. Why bother? The resulting price would be so high who will buy it?

I work in the Australian film community. YES there IS an Australian film community. Aussies actually make great films, and are what I would consider a savy tech-nation. It’s doubtful that the average American will ever see any of the Aussie films though, as America turns its gaze inward, whereas Australia is always looking outward. American is content with gazing at itself in the mirror where as Aussies are forced to have American culture rammed down their throat. The free trade agreement saw to that. Australian films have virtually no chance of getting large scale cinema distribution in our country, which si a shame actually because Australian culture is amazing.

The resentment Australians feel toward America stems from many sources. Some of it, strangely enough, dates back to World War II. I’m not sure I completely understand it, but it has something to do with American servicemen coming to Australia during war-time while the Aussie male population was off to war, and married away all the Aussie brides. I’m not sure I completely understand that one though.

Australia does, however, harbor a great deal of resentment regarding the gulf war and continuing hostilities with Iraq and Afghanistan. The Australian Prime Minister John Howard is perceived to be the lap dog of George W. Bush and in Americas pocket. The Australian people do not want to be engaged in this conflict and it is a common assertion that I hear John Howard does not represent the will of the people.

As a student I am exposed to people from all over the world. I have been here many years, and have heard many an Anti-American statement. As world news gets worse and worse, and Gasoline process soar above $3 a litre (YES I said LITRE, NOT GALLONS- CONSIDER THAT!!) Our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan pay more for their petroleum products, so WE don’t have to. Resentment for America grows and grows. I hear bad things about my country constantly. I spend a great deal of time defending my country, for better or worse.

Then when I see things in the news like I did about the flooding in New Orleans and the rape gangs, people shooting at rescue helicopters, looting, and lack of federal assistance to victims I wonder why I bother defending my country at all.

Here was a problem waiting to happen that could have been avoided. New Orleans had been warning the federal government of this impending disaster for years. The levee problem had been assessed a long time ago. Still, budget cuts came and warnings went unheeded. Nothing was done.

And even after this disaster happened, the American federal government was slow to respond. Instead of relief, what the victims get is “spin”. This disaster is no small problem, this is a disaster on an EPIC SCALE. A disaster that again, (like 9/11) could have been avoided.

And how ugly were the looters and thugs running around? One of the worst natural disasters to have ever happened on American soil and all these people can think of is going out and taking other peoples “stuff”. Perhaps this is one of the biggest problems with American culture- the rampant and rapacious zeal for capitalism and greed, acquiring more and more material possessions. We are bred for it. It is drilled into us on a base level.

I’m not making excuses for these people, but this is what people do when they get to the end of their rope. The racial division in that city is wide, as is the socio-economic differences. When you have people driving Ferrari’s past people who can’t afford to eat but once every other day, eventually this kind of backlash is going to happen.

I am disgusted more by the American governments failure to respond in a timely fashion. This is the very reason why the Homeland Protection Act came into existence, and there is simply no good reason for the lack of response. Why this failure? Because the threat wasn’t from a terrorist group? This single action (or lack thereof) speaks volumes about the true motivation of the American government.

What has happened is terrible. It is almost of biblical proportions. I think it amazing that a disaster on the scale of 9/11 has failed to warrant the compassion and response by the government, or the government agencies designed to deal with such tradgedies- namely FEMA and The Homeland Security Office. Disgusting.

Many Australians perceive us as crazy, gun toting maniacs with a crime rate like something out of a science fiction movie. When they see this in their newspapers it is hard to convince them otherwise. Still more say we “had it coming”.

I don’t know about that, but I am personally very embarrassed and ashamed of the way the people of my country behaved, as well as how the government itself failed to behave. It’s hard to convince Australians that we aren’t a hopeless case when you see the images of looters raging in the street, and hear the stores of gunmen holding up pharmaceutical truck deliveries, or shooting at rescue helicopters. It’s hard to convince Australians of our sincerity in the Mid-East when the American Government cannot even come to the rescue of its own people when they are drowning. It’s hard to take George Bush seriously when he spins the blame without taking responsibility.

Were not headed in a good direction. Rome will burn eventually. It’s only a matter of time.

THE OLDER YOU GET,…


The older you get, the faster the speed of time goes. It accelerates on a curve. When you were 9 years old summer vacation from school seemed like an eternity. When you were 10 you thought back half your life and that seemed like ages ago. Now I’m 38 and months pass like weeks, weeks pass like days, and days pass like hours. It just keeps speeding up and I can never seem to get anything done. I can think back half my life now and it’s 20 years, which seems like yesterday.

I have been so busy that I panic sometimes- how will I ever finish this stuff. The Ph.D. is killing me and I am stressed. I have a film on the table to compose music for, multitudes of problems, some audio work for my business and I just don’t have time for any of it, not to mention my pursuits of pleasure or interest: I have 4-6 music compositions I am writing just for the fun of it- I may never finish them. My to-do list just keeps growing. It’s insane.

I also find that I am in doubt whether I want to continue living in Australia or return home to the U.S. I am seriously considering moving to Los Angeles and “taking a swim with the sharks”. I am thinking of plunging into the music for film market in the heat of the action- that melee that is called “Los Angeles”. At this point I wonder if my Ph.D. studies is taking me closer or farther away from what I really want to do- compose music for motion pictures. All I want to do now is DO. All I want to do is engage in the practice. Fuck theory.