i finished the other one of moe’s holiday gifts today, and i took pictures, but they’re going to have to wait until after the holidays, because of the fact that she might be reading this. the other one is dependent on our getting into the bobs concert on saturday, and if we don’t then it will be her birthday present instead of a holiday gift. the other gifts i have to wrap are for moe’s grandmother, and it’s okay if she reads about them…

i’ve been avoiding places like malls, and grocery stores and suchlike pretty much all the time this year, because i know that the “christmas” music and overabundance of battles between “christians”, jews and muslims these days would bring me down considerably. i’ve been doing a pretty good job of avoiding all of that “stuff” ever since thanksgiving, which has resulted in my not being so overwhelmed with rage at the phony “peace on earth, goodwill towards men” attitude that, without question, will abruptly disappear once december 25th passes. i used to make a habit of going to the solstice grand dance, in bellingham. i actually went to it for long enough for it to become a “tradition” (which, according to what i’ve heard, is seven years), but since i moved to seattle, i haven’t been back to bellingham for the holidays at all, and i kind of miss it. the fremont solstice feast was sort of a stop-gap, in that it was a big social gathering that, at one time, i might have been interested in turning into a “tradition”, but i’ve actually avoided it the past few years, because the politics involved with being involved with it are a little oppressive. i like the idea of celebrating panchaganapathi, but there’s so much “christian” holiday “spirit” permeating my life that it’s difficult for me to break free for a 12-hour meditation, much less for 5 of them.

a little music: The Avant Garde Project has a plethora of music by john cage, harry partch, morton subotnik, pauline oliveros, luciano berio, and other heros of mine. i’m currently downloading The World of Harry Partch, but almost everything there looks interesting enough to download. oddly enough, i only found about the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC file format) comparitively recently. it’s kind of weird that i would be so stuck on MP3, when there’s a free, lossless format that i could be using instead, and at this point, the only reason i’m not using FLAC or Ogg Vorbis exclusively is because my iPod is still running the proprietary iTunes software (which doesn’t support either .flac or .ogg format files) instead of the free, opensource Rockbox software (which does) instead.

as always, there’s much more that i can’t remember… when i sat down and started typing i had at least 5 different subjects that i intended to discuss, but i can only remember three of them, so there will probably be more later.