Three New Improvs

I've been sitting on these for a while. One in particular needed editing. But if I start cutting and pasting I have trouble deciding when to stop, and there's only so much of that I can do and still call it improvised. So mostly I leave them alone even if I meander for a while in the middle. With each one of these it gets harder to come up with things that sound new. But I'm still tinkering with interesting effects to try out.

I am planning to record some things that are actually composed. Until now I've left my compositions to the computer to perform for me, but I have something I've been working on that I can do by myself.

Strangelet Soup

In the Future, Everyone Will Be "The Man" For Fifteen Seconds

One of the odd things about the internet is meeting famous, or semi-famous people and interacting with them in a kind of community, and having to reconcile this experience with the experience of being a fan.

This is most pronounced, for me, on forums. More than once I have discovered that a person I like very much as a writer is not a person I can get along with on a message board. Of course, there's no reason to expect otherwise. You have to remind yourself that the writer of your favorite novel is not your friend, no matter how much time you feel you've spent with him, or how close you may feel to his characters.

And the strangeness of this dichotomy reaches its peak when the object of fandom has moderator power over the board. I have a small problem with authority - not in a spiteful troublemaker kind of way, more in a naive anarchist kind of way - so it's particularly uncomfortable when someone I admire becomes The Man. I have to resist an urge to take the side of a banned poster, even if they deserved it, and I have to temper my knee-jerk emotional response, which is resentment and paranoia.

I can see in myself the same emotional reaction that causes netizens worldwide to cry "The mods are nazis!" Such reactions are (mostly) unwarranted, but the net is so much like an anarchist utopia that the occasional imposition of authority stands out like black on white. It's impossible not to feel threatened. On occasion I have felt deeply disturbed by events like this, but I get over it within a couple days. I guess the lesson is "sleep on it."

Learning is Fun: Mortality Edition

On a whim, I looked up the location of the grave of Emperor Norton.

That led me to the city of Colma, a modern necropolis. I found myself thinking I should go there someday.

Apparently there's a musical.

The plural of necropolis is "necropoleis."