If you read my last post, you know where my head’s at with this whole business. I won’t lie; I had a couple of meltdowns this week. I’m a creature of habit, and all these necessary changes to how we’ve got to live life for the next little while is really wearing on me. Seriously. As disorganized and mismanaged work environment is, and how much stress it gives me, at least I can still get up and come in to my empty building and work from my office…for now. Never mind that that work is all over the place (on a status call Wednesday, my boss acknowledged, to the gathered project heads in our PMO, that I’m essentially working two jobs), just the act of getting up and driving in and spending eight hours (this week, anyway, last week was a bit more) at my desk answering emails and filling out forms and such and then leaving is at least something regular for me to hang my fraying sanity on.

As I write this in fits and starts on Thursday, I’m fretting about a conference call with a particularly frustrating and aggressively obstinate customer who won’t take “Please be patient, let us make sure this new stuff works before you get to use it” for an answer, let alone “No”, that I have to do today. It sucks, certainly, but at least it’s something that’s approaching “normal.”

I have gotten out into the woods a little bit this week; hiking at this point, but Friday afternoon’s weather looks like it might be conducive to biking; which I could really use, to be frank – it does reduce stress levels, and I’m carrying a few more pounds than I’d like due to unpredictable weather and, honestly, because I’ve been drinking away my feelings a bit more than usual.

That last bit is a problem that could likely solve itself; I really worry that a lot of my favorite haunts and music venues, small businesses all, might not survive this.

Honestly, who the hell knows about the weekend…it’ll be what it’ll be. We’re hitting particular place on the calendar that hits me hard pretty much every year; I was kind of counting on a con gig this weekend to provide a welcome distraction, but…yeah. I did some live stream testing earlier this week, and I just might do a “testing the waters” online show if I can muster up the enthusiasm.

Anyway, tunes: Lots of melodic power pop this week, with some chanteuse action sprinkled in for flavor. Normally this would hit me in my happy place, but to be honest, I’m having a hard time finding it:

1. “Wicked Gravity” – Jim Carroll Band
2. “Abegail Anne” – Jeremy Enigk
3. “If It Makes You Happy” – The Screaming Females
4. “Raspberry Beret” – Hindu Love Gods
5. “I Love You Suzanne” – Lou Reed
6. “California” – Wax
7. “Places That Are Gone” – Tommy Keene
8. “Left of Center” – Suzanne Vega, Joe Jackson
9. “Watusi Rodeo” – Guadalcanal Diary
10. “God” – Tori Amos
11. “Social” – Squirtgun
12. “Aeiou Sometimes Y” – Ebn Ozn
13. “Pushing Up Daisies” – The Colourfield
14. “Perfect” – The The

Given that so many of us who are musicians are finding ourselves without places to play in this age of social distancing and pandemics and all, after some sort of clandestine testing earlier this week, I shall be doing my own streaming show on Saturday afternoon at 4pm on Facebook Live:

I’m calling it Chuck Parker’s Happy Hour Streaming Matinee, because I’m doing it during traditional Happy Hour/Matinee times, and I’ll probably be drinking, because why the heck not.

I expect I’ll have a tip jar via PayPal if you care to toss a coin to your filker, but it’s really about giving us something to look at during this time of CORVID-19 and social distancing and all that. My record, World’s Okayest…, is currently out there for free (or name your price) on bandcamp for the duration of this pandemic business, though I’d prefer if you spend the money you’d toss toward my record on somebody who depends on this for their livelihood; you know, “pay it forward” and all that.

In any case, I’ll be playing for at least an hour on Saturday afternoon here in front of my laptop camera in my spare room. If you feel like joining me, I’d love to have you!

Coping with the current General State of Things™ certainly isn’t made easier when you have a degree in history, and not just because it lets you pervert Santayana for effect.

Beyond the whole “plaugues of the xx20s” thing that’s going around the internets, the stock market fluctuating wildly then tanking (which is mostly due to panic, but our entire financial system really does hinge on the superstitious nature of a few twitchy elites), and the usual senior Executive branch incompetence (stuff I encounter directly, but especially I read about in the news), it’s hard to feel confident about where we’re going as a civilization, and more specifically a nation.

I’ve kind of given up getting excited about blips of goodness I see; cynicism and low expectations are, frankly, easier. I’ve watched over the past year or so a wildly diverse, progressive, and effective crop of Democratic Presidential candidates get whittled down to a couple of sunsetting white guys to run against another sunsetting white guy, only more inept and fascist. I visit the grocery store to find empty shelves (and not *just* toilet paper, but damned near everything) and people (nearly, most of the time) getting into physical confrontations over bottles of hand sanitizer. I’m watching the Government, who claims they can’t possibly afford to set up a functional national healthcare solution toss $1.5 BILLION dollars (a number of a kind with what it would cost to get every American’s basic health care needs covered) at the financial industry last week because it panicked. I see conservative polticians and evangelical religious groups ignoring good advice about “flattening the curve” so our rickety healthcare system might have a chance at keeping pace with the needs of the most vulnerable Americans, threatening to “lick the floors” to own the libs rather than doing the smart thing.

I’m struggling to cope with it all. Right now there’s so much uncertainty (I can work from my office right now, but who knows when they’re going to kick me out to work from home? Who knows when my kids will get to go back to school?), as well as uncomfortable parallels from history. I think it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better, and right now, at least at the moment, I’m finding it hard to see much good in the world, no matter how much better I have it than most people.

One of the first headlines I read this morning was about how apparently the White House has finally, maybe started to take this business seriously instead of whatever he’s been doing, which has mostly been mucking around with appearances and denying there’s anything wrong. These couple of execerpts really hit me in my inner history major:

“Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin drew a parallel from today to the Great Depression in the early 1930s, when President Herbert Hoover was so lacking in leadership and unwilling to commit federal aid to help those suffering that it fell to governors to protect their citizens. That was when a New York governor named Franklin D. Roosevelt rose to national prominence by talking about the government’s responsibility to lift up society and launched the first public works programs for unemployed citizens. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932…”

“…Why is it that most of the presidents we remember the best had moments of crisis, whether it’s George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt? It’s because they were able to communicate to the people what the crisis was, to make the people feel inspired to be part of working it out through empathy, taking responsibility and setting an example, and then to mobilize every resource in the country.”

It’s looking awfully familiar, and it’s not exactly comforting. Worse, even if we do manage to overcome the advantages of incumbency and vote out the current administration in November, it’s likely to be too little, too late; I don’t dislike either of the guys still in the race, though I’m relatively sure we’ve already eliminated our best chance at another FDR, no matter how many of her plans are incorporated into the eventual party platform; I just don’t think either of them have the charisma, drive, or ovaries.

Well, we’ll just manage the best we can day to day. We might even come out okay on the other side of this. But right now, at this moment, I’m struggling to find the upside.

So, for the most part, I practiced social distancing this weekend, spending most of Saturday and Sunday alone in my car with audiobooks traveling I-95.

Of course, at the mid-point of my 600 mile highway odyssey, I spent a few hours making music with a small group of friends in St. Matthews, South Carolina at PossumCon, the name folks gave to the latest house filk at a dear friend’s house; the first since his spouse passed away last year; this weekend would have been her birthday, and it was a fitting tribute to her, as she loved this sort of thing.

We did spend most of our time the requisite six feet apart (all the better to leave room for guitars, fiddles, mandolins, and a theremin) taking turns playing silly, topical, and occasionally touching tunes spread around the living room. It was a wonderful, if temporary, escape from reality, since it looks like it’s the last time I’m going to get to play music out in the world for a while, as gigs are getting cancelled or postponed left and right, as governments all over the country start preventing gatherings of more than 50 people. FantaSci, where I was playing with the Humdingers this weekend, has been canceled, as has this month’s Open Mic at Castleburg. It sucks, but it’s probably for the best, even if it isn’t ideal.

In fact, lots of my fellow musicians, as well as convention organizers, small businesses, crafters, and the like are probably going to take a big hit over the next couple of months (at least) as prevention shuts down or limits their ability to ply their wares and events to the public; some of us have day jobs and will do alright, but a lot of these folks (including many friends of mine) depend on their art and creativity for income, and that’s going to be severely limited for at least the next little while. So, if you’re able, why not grab takeout at a local restaurant, buy a CD from a local musician, or browse folks’ Etsy stores for cool stuff (but don’t click the ads you see out there on social media; the current policies are really hurting vendors’ livelihoods).

In the interest of giving, I’ve made my record, World’s Okayest…, free (or name your price) on bandcamp for the forseeable future. I have a day job that isn’t going anywhere (at worst, I’ll be teleworking if they shut the facility down). If you were thinking about buying my record in the next little while, take mine, enjoy, and go buy someone else’s who does this for a living and would miss the income. Otherwise, just enjoy.

Lots of musicians I know are turning to online streaming to get their music out there since our ability to perform in the usual venues is limited right now. We streamed about two hours’ worth of our “concert” on Saturday, and I’m likely to work on setting up some sort of streaming arrangement this week as life settles down, and probably do some sort of show by the end of the week. In the meantime, check out your favorite performers’ social media (my bandmates in the Blibbering Humdingers are doing one Monday night at 8pm, for example – wish I could join them, but, y’know, latency…), since that’s where they’ll promote their efforts – also, my virtual friend (we’ll meet IRL one of these days), Eric Distad of The Faithful Sidekicks and FAWM fame has set up Filk Streams, which is attempting to catalog various performers’ streaming events so they’re all centrally located for easy discovery.

Otherwise, as much as I’m talking about the news of the day, this weekend was actually quite a refreshing change; as I said, I spent most of my road trip listening to audiobooks (via Libro.fm, which is like audible, but works through local bookstores and passes proceeds back to them), and not the news. Just, me, the road, and some stories, and it took me out of the current events bubble for a bit, and it was nice. I’m not saying that keeping up with current events is bad; it’s not, and it’s the responsible thing to do, but in this age of the 24 hour news cycle, it’s okay to step away; the headlines will still be there when you come back. Get outside, or curl up with a book, or whatever; it’s good for you.

So, beyond the pandemic we’re dealing with in the other post, my world’s largely been occupied with long days spinning well over a hundred pages of well-written (if I do say so myself) bullshit to accomplish the Herculean effort of pulling together the acquisition package for a multi-million dollar omnibus IT services contract that should have been started months ago, but was introduced to me by my boss in the middle of last week to be complete by mid-day Thursday. It’s been mostly a blur of ten hour days writing various documents and justifications and plans to get this business sorted out. Nothing like trying to make the best case you can when you don’t have nearly all the information.

I did take off Tuesday to get my annual physical and such sorted out – turns out I’m terribly healthy, though I’m still holding on to some of my winter weight (about 20 pounds too much that I’ll drop when the weather is reliably bike-friendly), and apparently my posture is awful (which my lovely spouse confirmed). That didn’t take *all* day, so I spent the afternoon running around the city with the eldest child who’s home on spring break this week. We had fun browsing bookstores and eating fried appetizers that aren’t good for us.

A lot of the crazy March Irish dance stuff is getting cancelled due to the viral apocalypse, so the girls are getting less busy, which is frustrating for them, but not as frustrating as “opposite day” at the feis, where folks who nailed their performances regularly got ranked lower than people who forgot steps. It was…odd.

At this point, I’m still looking at traveling down to SC for the weekend for a house concert with a bunch of other filk buddies, though I’m keeping an eye on what the host has to say as we get closer. Likewise, Fanta-Sci still appears to be on for next weekend in Durham, though honestly, who knows what’ll happen between now and then. Any gathering at all on the schedule is, at this point, purely theoretical until it actually happens.

Anyway, tunes. Kinda the usual, though number 1 was definitely influenced by my listening to a bunch of Riot Grrl the other day:

1. “My Sister” – The Julianna Hatfield Three
2. “Cemetry Gates” – The Smiths
3. “Dracula From Houston” – Butthole Surfers
4. “What Is Life” – George Harrison
5. “Good Fucking Bye” – Matt Skiba
6. “F.N.T.” – Semisonic
7. “Baby Britain” – Elliott Smith
8. “Ladykillers” – Lush
9. “Domino Effect” – Ozma
10. “Kate Is Great” – Bouncing Souls
11. “I Look Around”- The Rain Parade
12. “I Think I’m In Love” – Beck

Wasn’t it fun when we were all arguing about old white guys running for President?

the obsessions of the public consciousness seem to move faster than the speed of thought these days, given that we’ve all got access to all the world’s information in our pockets, and there are multiple 24 hour “news” organizations scrambling to fill time with talking heads blabbering about the news of the day.

While there’s some definite advantages to this, it often creates many more problems than it solves, as it’s difficult to sift through the deluge to find the good information amongst all the bad (shared with both genuine concern and malice). Sturgeon’s Law, of course, is alive and well, so there’s a hell of a lot more bad information than good.

Enter COVID-19.

I am *not* an epidemiologist, or any other sort of scientist, really, so I am speaking from the position of a mostly-informed civilian (all mistakes in terminology are solely mine). This virus is serious, mostly because it’s new (well not a totally new virus, but a new strain of a very common one), and humanity as a whole hasn’t encountered it before, and thus lacks herd immunity, since few people have developed antibodies to it naturally, and there is, thus far, no vaccine. The average healthy person who gets infected is likely going to experience a week or two of illness and discomfort, not unlike the flu or other bug. That said, all the precautions being advised (although you should be washing your hands anyway) are more about protecting those of us who are especially vulerable to infection, or might have other conditions that prevent them from fighting the infection or might have something else aggrivated by it. The people who have died (and in the scheme of things, there aren’t many) largely fall into these categories.

Even if the US Government is doing terrible job of handling this business, the media, both professional and social, are likewise distributing plenty of terrible information. If you hear something that sound foolish, it probably is. It’s not a liberal hoax or false flag, it’s not a Chinese chemical attack, your dog can’t give it to you, and you won’t be cured drinking some televangelist’s silver solution.

Just wash your damned hands.

The precautions being taken, especially the shutting down of lots of big public gatherings, is probably a good thing overall, should slow the spread, but at this point, it’s here, we’re not going to stop it. Cases are popping up all over the place – the news announced the first one in my metropolitan area yesterday. I expect I’ll be doing some working-from-home before all is said and done. Most of us are going to be exposed sooner or later in the next few months. Part of me just wants to get it over with, build the herd immunity, and keep the vulnerable as safe as we can.

That said, the public response isn’t really tamping down panic; hand sanitizer and toilet paper are flying off shelves, kids at school are getting bad info from their cable news watching parents and it’s causing undue anxiety (I have first-hand knowledge of this).

We shall, however, see what happens. I fully expect it, as I indicate in this post title, that it’s gonna get weirder before it gets better.

Rampant exchange of bodily fluids was a major cause of society’s downfall. After AIDS, the was NRS, then there was UBT. One of the first things Cocteau did was outlaw and engineer all fluid transfer out of socially accepted behavior…

Hasn’t been the best week, honestly.

I’m mostly past the latest cold/flu/definitely not Covid-19 bug, but this one feels like it’s going to…linger. Taking off work Monday to play dead kinda helped, though playing catch-up always sucks, especially with a sore throat and gnomes hammering in the sinuses behind my eyes.

Work has been a flurry of bad news/confirmation of worst-case scenarios all week. This, too, sucks, but at least the questions are answered. Not looking forward to the efforts to fix it all, however, but that’s what they pay me the middling bucks for. I’m also, understandably, less than thrilled with the results of Super Tuesday, as my chosen candidate didn’t do as well as I would have liked, and I’m working on coming to terms with that. While, as I write this on Thursday, she hasn’t yet made a decision on the way forward, I think the writing is on the wall, and I expect it’ll be coming to an end soon (update: It has). She’ll likely have some leverage to get some of her plans incorporated into the party platform depending on who she eventually decides who to throw her lot in with in the end; I won’t make any predictions at this point; I can see benefits to backing either Biden of Sanders, or neither. Anyway, I’m not sorry I cast my vote for her, and I’m very appreciative of what she brought to the campaign, in terms of ideas, intelligence, energy, and attitude (killing Bloomberg’s vanity campaign is all on her, and it was beautiful); she elevated the discourse, and in the end, that’ll make the eventual nominee better prepared.

Most campaigns I get emotionally and personally invested in (2004 with Dean comes specifically to mind), I end up hitting this point of mourning. It’s frustrating, as I really do think she’s the most prepared to do the job, and she really is the smartest damned person in the room with a strategy to get the job done. If you looked at solely at my social media feed last week, Senator Warren should have been winning this thing in a walk. Of course, my social circle isn’t representative of the Democratic coalition as a whole, and, given my status as a (relatively) highly educated white person, and my social circle being, on the whole, demographically similar to myself, we’re all right in the Warren campaign’s sweet spot. Problem is, our particular demographic niche is a relatively small part of the coalition as a whole. As this excellent and insightful piece describes, “People like me love Elizabeth Warren”, but…

The reality is that there aren’t that many people like us — and there’s a valuable lesson in that, not just about the Warren campaign specifically but about some of the larger dynamics in American politics.

I highly recommend reading the whole piece; it puts a lot of things, least of all, the privilege that my particular demographic enjoys, into perspective. But, even if I understand it, it’s still a disappointment personally, and combined with the perfect storm of other crap in my life in the last week, it all adds up to a very emotionally and physically tumultuous couple of days.

It hasn’t been all bad, however. Even if I was kinda wrung out, my eldest absolutely KILLED it as the lead in the spring musical at school last weekend, Fountain of You, and it seems like it was a good experience for her, especially getting to work with the writer and composer of the show, which had it’s world premiere on the stage at SBC.

This weekend, being the beginning of March, is the beginning of serious Irish dance season; Friday afternoon I have to go set up sound for the weekend’s Feis, and since dance dad owns the P.A., dance dad runs sound. It’s sure to be exhausting, but it’s always fun.

That’s kind of the story. Emotional roller coaster. But, let’s talk tunes. This week’s spotify dump is absolutely chock full of indie spanning the 90s to today, with a nice riot grrl flavor (which gets even spicier after I stopped logging them), which feels vaguely appropriate. Persist:

1. “The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton” – Laura Jane Grace
2. “Zombie” – Langhorne Slim
3. “Here Comes My Baby” – Yo La Tengo
4. “Ladder to the Sun” – Saintseneca
5. “Air Mattress” – Connor Oberst
6. “Just Like A Ringing Bell” – Titus Andronicus
7. “Seether” – Veruca Salt
8. “Going to Marrakesh” – The Extra Glenns
9. “Be My Lover” – Alice Cooper
10. “Hey Jealousy” – The Ergs
11. “A Little More Time” – The Drew Thomson Foundation
12. “Section 12 (Hold Me Now)” – The Polyphonic Spree
13. “The High Road” – The Feelies

This morning at 6:15am, I cast my vote for Elizabeth Warren.

If you’re asking why, I’ll tell you: I think she’s the best candidate for the job, and I’m with her until such time as she’s not a candidate. You can read my post from last week if you want to see my not-as-articulate-as-some endorsement. It’s the primary; the idea here is to vote for the candidate you think is best; the time for compromise and “blue no matter who” is in November. If your preferred candidate isn’t one of the top two the media is pushing right now, go ahead and vote for her! Even if you candidate doesn’t win the day, your show of support will put weight behind the message, and force the eventual nominee to consider adopting it.

I don’t dislike Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden; I actually like them both, but I honestly think Liz Warren, with all her nerdy policy enthusiasm and plans and drive and energy and charisma, is the best person for the job. You can tell she’s really thought about the issues we’re facing in America today, and has developed strategies, with the help of very smart people in politics, industry, academia, and all the other applicable areas, to address those issues. In the end, yes, she’ll have to work with the rest of the government to get those plans enacted, and she’ll have to make compromises along the way, but she knows that, but dammit, she’s done her homework in ways the other guys haven’t, and she’s likely got her second, third, fourth, and fifth order compromises planned as well – I trust her to make the case on stuff like health care, finance, foreign policy, education, and all those other issues, and get something done to improve our situation.

This is a woman, who, as a private citizen, through sheer force of will and dogged persistence, brought a new federal agency to protect consumers from predatory lending practices, into being. That’s bad ass.

So, that’s the case. I want someone who has big ideas based on meticulously researched evidence, the will to fight to get those ideas enacted, and has the experience working with others (see: Senator) to accomplish her goals through compromise, persusasion, and evidence.

Also, I kind of want to see her tear Donald Trump a new one the way she’s done to Bloomberg, but that’s mostly out of selfish pleasure.

So yes – vote today if it’s your turn, or whenever your primary comes up; it’s the least you can do to participate in democracy (however flawed). And in the primary; vote your favorite; vote the least bad when it comes time in November; here in March (or whenever), do yourself a favor and really feel good about the vote you cast.

I know I do. And it’s a very good feeling.

I can’t breathe.

Seriously, I swear, I have gotten sick more often this year than I have in recent memory. It sucks. It doesn’t help that I’ve seen the sun maybe once in the last three or four days, and I’ve been shanghai’d into mostly pointless training most of the week, which has thrown off my usual schedule, keeping me at the office later than is standard practice (and the “hey, you can sleep in!” idea doesn’t stick). It’s also that kind of sick where you feel not great and blow your nose through three boxes of tissues in a week, but you can’t quite justify staying home sick, especially when there’s work to be done.

So, I’ve been sitting listening to elementary-level contracts training all week, while trying to get my usual crap done in a couple of hours in the morning, then going home and crashing, hard, on Nyquil and chicken soup.

That’s honestly been my week. I knocked out my last FAWM tune, so I “won” with 14, though with how I’m feeling, I don’t think I’m going to get any more done. Oh well. I think I’ve got a theme EP and a couple of “hits” out of this one. We’ll see once I have my head and voice back.

Weekend plans include a drive out west for some theater, keeping an eye on the SC primary, but otherwise trying to beat this crap that’s taken up residence behind my eyes.

Anyway, tunes. Not a bad mix out of this one; some solid stuff, and a wonderful discovery (and a wonderful title) there at #4 that I’ve never heard before, but am kind of in love with; great rollicking rhythm.

Oh, I’ll leave you all with this, which was kind of inevitable: Mayor Pete fan fiction.

1. “Curious” – Sandbox
2. “Howling At The Moon (Sha-La-La)” – The Ramones
3. “Sleeping Angel” – Stevie Nicks
4. “Fuck, I Hate the Cold” – Cowboy Junkies
5. “Waiting for the Great Leap Forward” – Billy Bragg
6. “Ruby Soho” – Rancid
7. “Torn” – Edna Swap
8. “Summer of 89” – Butch Walker and the Black Widows
9. “Little Bribes” – Death Cab for Cutie
10. “Life in One Day” – Howard Jones
11. “Wreckless Abandon” – The Dirty Knobs
12. “16 Miitary Wives” – The Decembrists
13. “I Melt With You” – Modern English