DUDE. Anyone with a spare $6K-$50K to donate to oceanographic research gets to name a newly-discovered deep-sea creature! Annelids! Slugs! Sea stars! TUBE WORMS! PS Oooooo potential sea slug namers, I don't think Sluggy McSlugface is taken yet! scripps.ucsd.edu/giving/name-...

Why does my Starbucks login time out more quickly than my bank login?

interviewed Ramirez about her plans to dismantle DHS, abolish ICE, and put money towards housing and health care for communities ICE is terrorizing. www.publicnotice.co/p/delia-rami...

1. It was not an accident. 2. It was not a staffer. 3. While the president may have dementia his racism is not due to dementia. 4. He isn’t sorry. He means every racist thought he shares. 5. His base agrees with him. 6. He will do it again. 7. No one in power will hold him accountable.

Welp. It's been a very tough time on many levels, but on the bright side, I translated The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird into quasi-liturgical Latin (Avis undas equitat) and set it to an actual Byrd motet (Tui sunt caeli). So there is that. www.noteflight.com/music/titles...

Relive the excitement of Saturday's 14th Annual Capybara Long Bath Contest! Here's a video of the winning contestant, Prune from Nagasaki Bio Park, enjoying her winning long soak in the ofuro for 1 hour and 45 minutes. (The action starts around 29'05") #capybara #wintersports

We saw a ghost the other night, Tâf and I, out on the footpath. Well. She saw a ghost. I didn’t see anything. I felt them, though, knew they were there.

One of the reasons I am so insistent that everyone remember that only 22% of the US population voted for Trump is that the Christian Nationalists want the myth of a mandate in circulation. We need to reject it. They never had a mandate, and their coalition is shrinking.

My friend wrote this awesome piece on Wake Up, Dead Man! martycenter.org/sightings/wa...

One of the things that gets me about them people who are like “they are ending the constitution to distract from the Epstein files, don’t fall for it” is that nobody in power cares about little girls.

There's something to be said for someone who died as he lived: in denial of science and with unswerving devotion to con men who were happy to feed the self-serving fantasy of being a lone voice of reason in a mad world upon which he built his notoriety. Nothing positive, but definitely something.

This is true and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares)

Sign of the season #2,579: I saw the word hoodie and my brain read "hodie."

Absolutely nobody asked for this BUT English Anglican cathedrals that have burned down, fallen over, and sank into the swamp: a thread.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT

San Diego friends! Don't miss tonight's SACRA/PROFANA concert, a holiday-themed smorgasbord of sonic sumptuousness! Bonus: Me singing! Bonus bonus: I get to introduce Andrew Bearden's "Making the Darkness Bright," for which I wrote the lyrics! Tickets/info: www.sacraprofana.org/event-detail...

In the very serious world of church musicianship, we observed Advent 2 and by singing Gibbons's "This is the Record of John" and by hanging a printout of the appointed meme on the back of our music director's stand.

So yesterday's sequence hymn was People Look East, & after the gospel, our director of music accompanied the priest's walk to the pulpit with a sweet improvisation on that tune with extraverted flute stops that reminded me a little of the Pastoral Symphony in Messiah. So I dubbed it Pifa Look East.

OH MY GIDDY GOSH Andrew Bearden’s Missa Sacra Profana, whose “profana” text I wrote, made @kpbssandiego.bsky.social ‘s best-of music list for 2025!! *runs around flailing and screaming* Thank you so much for nominating us, Katina!! www.kpbs.org/news/arts-cu...

One of my family's holiday traditions is putting out a quartet of vintage ceramic angels who hold letters that spell out NOEL. The other half of this tradition is that someone rearranges them to spell LEON. My cousins & I discovered a few years ago that all of our families did this.

“We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.”

One last Advent music story! (For now!) During the pandemic, our conductor hosted a hymn sing (he played, we sang aong muted in Zoom), including that Advent banger Helmsley, aka "Lo! He comes with clouds descending." The 2nd verse is my fave for the emo repeition of the lines "Deeply wailing."

I posted about the super-cool, mystical Advent Procession service I sang a few years ago where marine layer billowed into the narthex as we sang, "...and lo, I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth." My friend replied that he's wearing a sweater this yer.

[rehearsing Tallis’s Audivi vocem de caelo] Director: Who knows what “clamor factus est” means? Tenor: There’s a loud noise. Director: Yes! And when? Alto: Media nocte! Me: [sings to Billy Joel’s tune] In the middle of the niiight! (maybe for next year’s Advent Procession?)

OH MY GOD I offered to rip an out-of-print CD to MP3 for a friend only to realize that my new-ish desktop computer doesn't have a CD/DVD drive. BUT! Past!Libby apparently realized this, because she ordered an external drive at the same time, which sat untouched... UNTIL TONIGHT!

Your're sipping a G&T while your partner has a fever and is shivering? Problematic ague gap.

Director: Okay, let’s pull out the Gibbons. Baritone: We shouldn’t monkey around. Tenor: It might get a bit hairy. Me: Yeah, but it swings! #professionalism

Remember Rev. David Black, the Chicago pastor who was shot in the head with pepper balls? If you haven't heard him speak yet, listen to this. To ICE: "You can repent"

Meanwhile in the temporary kitchen zone, I messed up my frozen breakfast. Thankfully, it seems to be the forgiving sort.

THAR SHE BLOWS! THE WHITE WHALE* APPARENTLY BE STREAMING ON DEMAND ON ACORN TV VIA SPECTRUM CABLE. -Ahab** in 2025 *The brilliant show Slings & Arrows, set at a fictional Shakespeare festival, which I have been trying to find on DVD for under $300 for nearly two decades just to rewatch **Me

All Souls' Day gets me up in my feels and I am HERE for it. You know you hit the right vibe in a Requiem Mass if you finish a movement and promptly tear up.

Director (a Dodger's fan): A lot of bad stuff happened in WWI and you can really hear that in Howells' music. Gone is the "we rule everything!" bombast of Stanford and Parry. Alto (from Toronto): LIKE DODGER'S FANS AFTER THE 70S!

Today's delightful rehearsal involved much LA v. Toronto trash talk, & we went on a tangent of alliterative titles based on choir members' neighborhoods, e.g. Sultan of Santee, Lord of Lemon Grove. I'm claiming Countess of Clairemont & considering dubbing our conductor the Raja or Rabbi of Rolando.

OKAY KIDS it is time for this year's pun costume! WHAT AM I?? Visual clues: 1. My adorable punem 2. The full costume 3. Details, including a barrel, mallet, staves, hoops, and laser measure to make my tool belt look more tool-belt-y 4. BONUS: my very first pun costume from 2008 (Alice in Chains)

Some bits of my Hallowe'en costume didn't arrive in time (boo), so I made do with a belt & cord I bought for my 2022 costume, craft paper last used for my 2015 costume (which I originally bought for my 2012 costume), & most impressively, the hosiery from my 2004 wedding. Costume pack rats FTW!

King Ozymandios Built works grandiose "Ye mighty: despair!" Ozzy says/blurts; His statues received their just deserts.

I want to gently push back on this: not being able to read complex writing is not the same as being a low information citizen. Many people can comprehend the topics involved just fine if they are presented in an accessible and understandable manner.

"The federal agencies that survived Elon Musk’s wrecking ball are now captured by the echo chamber of his social media platform, with cabinet secretaries staring furiously into a digital funhouse mirror to divine the will of the most internet-addled members of the MAGA base." — @lizdye.bsky.social

I have obtained a backup barrel for my Hallowe'en pun costume in case the one I ordered doesn't arrive in time. UNRELATED (OR IS IT??): TIL the Great Depression-era barrel worn with suspenders that was visual shorthand for poverty in cartoons is called a bankruptcy barrel.

OH HELLO I SEE YOU HAVE A CURLY QUOTE AT THE BEGINNING OF A LINE. I'LL JUST MAKE IT A CLOSE QUOTE, OKAY? —Clippy, probably

Cursed Donald orthography (not THAT cursed).

Apologies for the mood killer, but my friend Alicia, who saw first-hand this poor baby's condition, has set up this GoFundMe to support these grandparents' attempt to save her from further abuse. It's eight levels of heartbreaking, but you can help! www.gofundme.com/f/keep-jodie...

there are good & worthwhile historical & legal arguments for why the unitary executive is nonsense but to my mind the most straightforward argument is that it makes no logical sense that the president has absolute removal power over the people whose job it is to keep the executive branch accountable

WATCH LIVE: Senator Merkley hits hour 18 of marathon speech to 'protest Trump’s threats to Democracy' www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1VL...

The only better Halloween song is werewolf bar mitzvah (Spooky scary. Boys becoming men. Men becoming wolves.)

It was a heart-full, cathartic weekend, with a perfect farewell for a family friend & also singing the best ~3 minutes of choral music ever written. Good reminders to love whole-heartedly & to put as much beauty into the world as you can in the time you have. www.youtube.com/live/NJeqMUe...

Texts to spouse: GUESS WHAT WE ARE DOING FOR INTROIT AT EVENSONG THIS WEEK HINT IT IS PURCELL OTHER HINT IT IS MY FAVE PS NO WE ARE NOT DOING ONCE TWICE THRICE I JULIA TRY'D FOR EVENSONG

Hmm. I thought it was next door's child that was given a drum set recently, but it's being played now, during school hours. Is this revenge for all the Purcell and Mozart?

I got a quardruple-dose of Howells between the morning service and Evensong, but my most/least proud moment was noticing that the opening voluntary was "The Chosen Tune," and immediately singing about it to Billy Joel's "The Longest Time."