Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"I do believe that there is a word to describe people who think homosexuality is an overwhelming temptation. I believe that word is 'homosexual.'" -- Theron, commenter at Pandagon, 2009-06-30 (reacting to yet another stupid "if we don't oppress teh gayz, every guy will turn gay and society will fall apart" argument)

Yeah, it's the first night of a filk convention, and I should be in the circle listening & singing or in the con suite catching up with friends. But wow, Thursday took a lot out of me (way too many trips up and down stairs in record^[*] heat -- it's a wonder I can walk now -- and as a result I've been achy and exhausted all day. Did manage to get all the instruments inside the minivan (including drum kit but not the electric piano). Quite the jigsaw puzzle. Hope I can remember how I did it when I have to load it up again on Sunday.

Hotel room is out of range of the WiFi in the con suite, so my nightly webcomics will have to wait. There's a workshop in the morning that I hope I'm up for ... the bad: the workshop I want to go to is first thing in the morning. The good: this being a filk convention, first thing in the morning is 11:00. Still early enough that I may or may not be firing on all cylinders, but late enough for me to have a decent shot at actually being showered and medicated and breakfasted and coherent by then, what with my travel time being a very short walk.

The 'Wall of Instruments' is set up, though the power strip wasn't in the cable bag (whoops!) so I've just got one bass amp plugged in but not the rackmount effects unit (nor the mixer, which I mainly brought because it's the other thing in the rack the multi-effects unit is in, but also because I brought fewer amplifiers than electric instruments). I expect most of the interest to be in the acoustic instruments anyhow. I really need to remember to make up signs/labels ahead of time next time. I'm always happy to answer questions and give bit of history of various instruments, but having signs that answer some of the most common questions might cut down on the number of times I find myself trying to answer three different sets of questions at once.

There's now a strip of gaffer's tape on the edge of the fingerboard of the double bass, with marks on it to show where the frets would be if it had frets. I don't know why I didn't think of that myself -- someone else had to suggest that doing so might make the instrument a little less intimidating to folks who are interested in it but haven't played anything fretless before. (Well, okay, I do know why I didn't think of it: a classic error for me, þe olde "if it was easy for me it must simply be because it's just plain easy" blind-spot. In my case, the facts that (a) I already played oud, and (b) the scale length^[**] on a 3/4-size double bass viol is quite close to the scale length of a full-size bass guitar meant that getting used to plucking the double bass was very quick for me. Bowing, on the other hand, I'm still struggling with.) "Adam"^[***], the Franken-bass, is -- surprisingly -- still playable, if not all that stable tuning-wise (and I'm not sure the higher frets are in tune with the lower frets), partly due, I'm sure, to having been stored with the strings nearly slack. And a few octaves higher, I may have another mandolin, if the glue holds, and someone with small enough fingers finally picked up the itty bitty whistle that looks like a recorder, has six holes like a pennywhistle, and I still suspect may have been manufactured as a doll-house prop.

(The mandolin is a bowl-back one that friends rescued, partially restored, and gave to me. I'd been meaning to attack the tuners with WD-40, and when I finally got around to doing so and tried to tune it up to standard pitch, a most ominous cracking sound issued forth. Seeing the heel block starting to separate, I took advantage of the gap there to squirt some glue into it before releasing the tension again so the crack would close. So now the big question is whether the result of my doing that is that the mandolin will make it through the weekend, or still try to pull itself apart. In the two or three minutes that I had it nearly in tune, I did like its voice, even with rusty strings.)

Exhausted and oh so very achy, I need to sleep (I really wanted to take a nap instead of jumping into rush-hour traffic earlier), but (at least in part due to this distracting pain) still awake for at least a little longer. Do wanna get to that workshop tomorrow.

[*] I thought the outside-temperature readout on my dashboard might be unreliable, but during a break I checked wunderground.com and saw where they repeated a NWS announcement that the temperature in Baltimore had set a local record for the date, at 100 °F / ~38 °C / nearly 311 K. Which was just what the car said.

[**] Distance from nut to bridge (that is, the length of the freely vibrating part of the string when you pluck it un-[stopped|fretted]). Thus, what determines all the spaces between the notes up and down the neck.

[***] Needed for one gig way back when, Adam was cobbled together by maugorn from the corpses of two dead instruments we purchased from Daddy's Junky Music: an electric bass that had an intact neck, and what was probably already a cheap-ass folk guitar even before it was reduced to "as is" or "for parts" condition, selected because it was an acoustic with a bolt-on neck. Sonically, it worked far better than we had any right to expect, though you can watch the whole thing get gradually more bowed under the tension of those bass strings -- scary. The tone is louder and the lower frequencies clearer than that wee body looks like it ought to be able to produce. The fact that I can still tune it up and play it for short periods this many years later is surprising.

Okay, it's tomorrow now, or uh, finally today or something. Didn't sleep worth a darn, but did get moving again on time for the last half of that workshop. May or may not get a nap between now and a concert I don't want to miss. (Should nap, but there are all these Interesting People I See Too Seldom walking around to talk to, and music and stuff...)

I need a doumbek or two.

Thought that struck me in the shower: My favourite limericks aren't even limericks, as I have l'arnt. They screw with the meter and some of them peter out early. (If you want to break that into lines to make it self-referential, that's your problem. As I tweeted earlier from my phone, my fault but your problem. I got 2/3rds of the way through the thought before my brain caught the meter and I realized what I'd just done.)