Memento Mori Clavicymbalista Gothica

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Asparagus with Cheese please.
William & Mary mascot ideas include an asparagus.

I love it, I will vote for it as an alumnus. A big middle finger to the NCAA. I'm pretty sure Jon Stewart will also say something about it in his shows. Mike Tomlin will be now known as the Asparagus Football coach...Pittsburgh Asparagus!

The whole idea of offending native Americans is not reasonable. We are the first college in the country to take in Native American students, before the USA was born! Our Indian school started in 1691!

Per la libertà del mondo!
Monica Camilla Torino has organized a protest for the support of the freedom for Iran. Everyone in West Europe should turn off the lights in 6/22 2200. In Iran would be 2330. In England, 2100. etc.

Monica wrote me that for us here in the state we should just do it at 2200 on our individual local time.

Instead of protests in individual pockets within big cities or from speeches of politicians, we can show the bastards that the world cares.

difendi la libertà: 22 giugno,ore 22, spegni la luce

Hep, you are always the fastest, please spread this.

Never Again.
If you don't know why I posted this, you can check out my Facebook. If you don't know my account, email me. It is about the Iranian protest, but it turns into something else at a personal level.

I just discover how low my self esteem was before my "New Mexico death".

I will never again be a weakling, and I will never again to bend over backwards for the sake of having a relationship. I will never again date people of questionable character for the sake of lust and avoiding loneliness.

Pedophile, check (and married). Serial cheater, check. Pornographer who is a hypocrite, check. Came out of closet, and then be a hypocrite and deny it afterward, check. Player who intentionally not have safe sex, check. Get oneself pregnant to control and get financial gain, check. Pure evil person, check.

The only good person I have ever seriously dated was a swinger, who is the only person whom I am close to and still communicate. 1 out of 8, not a good statistic.

Never again.

Forbidden Island Tiki for pixiesnakes.
Come celebrate

pixiesnakes birthday June 16 (that's tomorrow!) Tuesday at Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge in Alameda, starting at 7pm..see you there!

Court
Court hearing with the DMV judge went well. Surprisingly the judge knew what my illness (CPPS) is about. He actually said "You can't sit for long right?". He also knew that I cannot travel far. Maybe my illness finally is getting the type of publicity it needs.

The suspension of my drivers license will be lifted as soon as I receive the confirmation letter. They will put me on probation for a year though. I should be able to drive later next week. Thank you everyone for the support, and mojo help.

Current Mood: relieved

Concert Tomorrow (Funeral Attires Optional!)

I am taking a break for June, working on harpsichordstudio.net...
..the upside is, I will have the new C/E broken octave harpsichord by then.

Squid vs Hippie Guy.
Discussing with

evergrey about why God chose to send a human as opposed to something else...for example, Cthulu, and that it is probably more effective in the long run of schemes.

Gospel according to Long John Silver:

(10:36:23 PM) me: "and lo, a squid with lots of tentacles appear form the sky coming out from a flying dinner plate, and said "Love thy neighbor as yourself"".
(10:37:06 PM) me: "and twelve people hopped on to the flying dish and flew away with the squid"
(10:38:04 PM) me: "and the squid said to his passengers, "one of you will betray me, lets take some LSD now, and remember me"
(10:39:01 PM) me: one of his passenger secretly left the flying dish, talked to the company "Birds Eye", and receiving some stocks
(10:39:42 PM) me: the flying saucer landed on the sea. The passenger who got stocks pointed to the squid and said, "This is the big one"
(10:39:58 PM) me: Birds eye Corporation have their fishing boats ready, trawled a net, and caught the squid.
(10:40:12 PM) me: People screamed "We don't want McDonald's, we want calamari!"
(10:41:07 PM) me: So all the McDonald's were closed for one day for a free paid vacation for their employees, and the squid was put on a clothing line to be hung dry. And the squid said "Father why did you abandon me?" before being grilled and breaded. A Tsunami appeared, all the fishing boats were sunk, Bird Eyes went bankrupt so the passenger hanged himself because his stocks now worth as good as toilet paper.
(10:41:48 PM) me: Personally, I think a hippie would be more convincing than a squid, as you can see.

Webshop
Anyone know what is the going rate for a web designer to create a shopping cart type of website? I am thinking of creating a web shop on my server instead of having a third party to do everything. Ultimately the pay will be through Paypal.

Also, does web designer also handle graphics? If they do, what is the going rate? If they do not, what is the going rate for a graphic artist?

I run FBSD and MySQL on my server.

Also, is it difficult to move the entire webshop from one server to another? I will be using cygoth as the host right now, but eventually the shop will be on its own server.

Clerical Celibacy
In case you have not read or watch the news recently, a famous priest named Alberto Cutie in Florida who was also a major television personality was caught having a relationship with a woman. According to Cutie, the relationship had been going on for two years. While apologizing to his followers and the church, Cutie admitted that right now he had a hard time choosing whether to quit the priesthood or to severe the relationship.

Due to the celebrity status of Cutie, this only serves to add fuel to the issue of clerical celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church. Today CNN.COM had two articles on its front web page; one is pro marriage, the other is con. I have decided to post an comment, whether it would be published by the website of not, I have no clues. But here is my comment:

In the "History of the Christian Church" by Dryer, married clergies were common, and seemed to be the rules instead of the exceptions before and around the twelve century. They lived their married life openly, and served as examples for the people. The Roman Synod of 1059 declared that priests should dismiss their concubines (which are NOT wives) and only allowed to live with a woman not a near relative (wives).

One also have to remember the power of the monastic orders. Monks were celibate. Unlike the East, the Roman church relied on the monastic orders to convert the masses, sometimes entire countries. So the zealous monks had a lot of power.

Unlike nowadays, priests and bishops frequently "owned" church properties. Simony was common. One particular bishop from the ducal house of Gascony owned eight sees, and willed it personally. A ten year old became the archbishop of Narbonne after paying 100,000 soldi in 1016. Ordinations of priests and deacons frequently involved money. Episcopate were sold and bought.

Numerous synods before the 11th centuries had struggled with the topic of clerical celibacy. Declarations were made without having much effect, or not passed at all due to the protests of a number of attendees.

All of the idea of owning properties and priestly marriage tied to the fact that the holders of the temporal power such as the Holy Roman Emperor had the power to appoint clergy. Popes could not be properly recognized without the consent from the Emperor. All of these came to a head during the investiture controversy between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV in 1078, and ended up with the papacy's victory in 1122 in the Concordat of Worms.

The result was the appointment of clergies now laid in the hands of the church. To eliminate simony, clerical celibacy was be needed so that clergies could not pass on their "properties" to their sons by merely ordinate them without the need of approval from the church. This also ensured that church income would go directly to the Papacy and Rome itself. While there was little way to stop the members of the Curia to continue to take in concubines and had bastards, the aim of concentrating the temporal power and wealth within the Roman nobility would be ensured. The Roman Curia could now receive the revenue that it wanted without Emperors, kings and duke's relatives and their children took a major cut of it.

Christ never insisted that celibacy was a must. He merely said that celibacy was the ideal way to follow him and to enter the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:29-30). Peter was married.

I feel that clerical celibacy had nothing to do with following an example of Christ, which was based on traditions that the church claimed. The Bible neither states that Christ had a relationship with any woman, nor does not state that Christ did not have a relationship with a woman. Nowhere in the Bible states that Peter stopped having sexual relationship with his wife. It does not state the whereabouts of his wife. It does not state whether Peter was a widower or not.

Hence the whole issue of clerical celibacy was a part of the plan of eliminating simony, which was also a plan for the Roman Curia and Roman nobility to control its properties and wealth. Indeed, if a member of the Curia had concubines and bastards, there would be little to confront about it by other members. Also, situations like the creation of the post of Cardinal Nephew was another way to circumvent the celibacy rule and allowed the Pope to involve his own bastard son into politics and power.

Official: Craigslist to replace 'blatant Internet brothel'
Official: Craigslist to replace 'blatant Internet brothel'

Total Incompetence. Another Government BS. This idea is as good as the prohibition.

1. Violate Freedom of Speech
2. Media is not responsible for opinions from advertisers.
3. Advertisers can still use other websites such as the Red Book. In fact, they can advertise on Escorts.co.uk which is based outside of the country.
4. Now we have people who are going to post ads disguising as a personal. Especially as casual encounters and misc romance. That's what piss me off the most.
5. We are not Communist China. A company cannot afford to hire an army of intelligence officers to censor the web.
6. Flagging in CL works. Why fix it if it ain't broken?

Roommate violence
So the roommate was sick and puked in the bathroom last night. That's fine, as long as she cleaned it up, and she did not: nor did she ask me to help. When today I asked her to clean "whenever you have time or ready", she threw a huge fit, kicked September's food stash, accusing me of never cleaning, calling me names, telling me this place is (&^(&^%&*%&*, and this is the last straw. I was reasonable, I *know* she is ill, and I never did insist that she cleans it right away. But right now the bathroom is virtually not usable, she puked everywhere, and I have no idea how she managed to do it. After all, there is the porcelain god that people usually do their praying...

I like to remind myself that 1. She owes me $100 2. She now owes me her entire deposit, since she skipped the rent the month before. 3. She destroyed her room's door. 4. She yelled at my cat, threatening her.

Here is the kicker. She accused me that the place was dirty hence she always got sick. I'm the one who have to live with the constant nausea. The place is not dirty at all, not by a long short. It just that it will never be as clean as a hotel. The truth of the matter is, I am the one receiving disability because of multiple physical illnesses. I myself cannot tolerate a place that is dirty, for my health's sake.

This is the second time she was off the wall. I think I need to start thinking of a Plan B.

Depressed
Very depressed, that's all. Not chemical. Went to BAGG and felt worse afterward. Should have stayed home. Nothing can cheer me up.

The Last Wednesday Lunchtime Concert: a Handel affair.
This Wednesday will quite possibly be the last ever lunchtime concert. My priest is leaving, so the the regular Wednesday service is most likely to be canceled after her departure at the end of the month. Until we hire a new rector, we will probably have minimal amount of services for the church. If you know any Episcopalian priest or recent graduate that may be interested in applying for the job of rector, let me know. The pay is decent.

The regular Friday night monthly concert should be business as usual, although I may start to move it around so that it will not be set at the third Friday. For example, the coming one is the Friday night of the Memorial Weekend (appropriately, a concert of harpsichord funeral music).

On a personal note, I have been asked to perform on the first Friday of the month a lunchtime concert in St. Davis of Wales Catholic Church in Richmond, we'll see what happens...

T shirt..
I designed one for fun, and ordered a few samples. Let me know what you think. I think it is quite silly ;-)
The front is the left side, the words on the right are for the backside.

Business Cards
I just designed and ordered a set of business cards from vistaprint.com.

May 3 Messiah Sing Along in Richmond

I will be the harpsichordist. They will have an Owen Daly Italian Harpsichord for me.

April Concert

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church
Monthly Friday Night Concert

Harpsichord and Organ Music of the Italian Renaissance from 1425 to 1550

April 17 Friday, 2009 at 8:00pm

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church
1501 Washington Avenue, Albany, CA 94707
Phone: (510) 525-1716

Admissions Free, Suggested Donation $10

Program
Faenza Codex (c.1425): Kyrie & Gloria (Cunctipotens Genitor Deus).
Vince Ho (Organ) Richard Mix (Cantor)

Andrea Antico: Frottole
Castell'Arquato Manuscripts: Passa Mezzi and Saltarelli.
Vince Ho (Virginal)

Ricercar by Marcantonio Cavazzoni, Girolamo Cavazzoni, Jacopo Fogliano, Julio Segni & Adrian Willaert.
Vince Ho (Harpsichord)

Organ: Hooks and Hasting 1912
Virginal: Anthony Hunt 1999 based on Renaissance model
Harpsichord: John Hickley 1975 based on Giovanni Antonio Baffo 1574

PERFORMER
Vince Ho

Princess Eugenie

It always blows my mind that the princesses look like real women, while the celebrities and social climbers trying to out-skinny each others. I guess being a royal means that you neither have to follow anyone, nor change your lifestyle based on peer pressure. If only everyone lives that way...