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Coming <black-metal-voice>this winter</black-metal-voice>

Oh, and 4 tootsie pops is obligatory for this, of course:

It was ten years after the Osaka Glitch: A small error in a ground control protocol caused several communications satellites to follow parallel orbits. The mistake went unnoticed for several years, as the satellites continued to drift and merge into the same elliptical path.

Soon after thousands of GSOs had became one, satellites G4339 and G6078 had reached the same velocity and crashed into one another, spewing debris for thousands of miles across the stratosphere. The debris would not have effected other satellites ordinarily, but since they were all following the same path, third crashed into the debris soon after. Then a fourth.. and like dominoes nearly half of the devices were either destroyed or had to be decommissioned.

The glitch, and it’s crash, caused a major global communication slow-down. The international network of information that maintained the world’s aggregation of knowledge slowed by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. In a world where economic and data stability are intimately linked, this was nothing to shrug off. People’s livelihoods suffered, many lost jobs. While some lost their houses, others just couldn’t afford a new car.

One of the primary occupations that were affected were the operators, a discipline that calibrated and orchestrated large electronic and mechanical systems to maintain and control the chaos of the noosphere into one that could be understood by humans. With communications crawling at a fraction of it’s normal rate, being an operator wasn’t as glamorous as it once was. While many groaned and complained about the state of affairs, some didn’t seem to notice it at all.

Jeffery turned off his oscilloscope, and powered down the transmitter. Eyes shut, he rubbed his eyes for a few seconds, then turned to his bookshelf. He plucked one of the dusty tomes from it’s slot and started flipping through some of the pages.. Various diagrams of abstract ideas.. graphs of continuous functions, circles inside triangles, criss-crossed by disecting lines. Despite trying to read a particular paragraph about properties of geometric convergences, his mind started to wonder and instead of persisting, he closed the book and placed it back on the shelf.

A moment later, his telephone rang. Before picking it up, he saw the name on the identification display: Mark. In an instant he knows how this conversation is going to go.. Mark is a very predictable man.. But without any immediate obligations, he does the nice guy thing and picks up the phone.

“Jeff!” A strange pause and then “How goes it?”

“Not bad, yourself?”

“Doing okay I suppose.. Trying to stay off the bottle, but you know how much of a bitch that can be… But anyways, listen Jeff, I’ve got an offer for you..

“Now before you tell me ‘No’, hear me out and let me describe the situation for you. There’s a place in Williamsburg. Called Tameric Corp. They produce antennas and the transducers for them, mostly for telecommunications companies. The work isn’t terribly complicated and they pay really well. But there are several things you gotta do for me first. The first one is, you’re going to need a sharp suit to wear. Next, you’ll want to review all you know about non-linear wave theory. I have a copy of Stein’s book you can look at. Then you’ll need to…”

“Look Mark, I’m glad you’re offering this to me, but… "

“Wait, wait, wait! I’m not done yet… okay? Jeff.. Jeff, I’m dead certain you could get this job. You’re a really sharp kid and you’ve got this stuff down cold. All you have to do is be your normal self and …”

“Listen Mark”, he raises his voice. “I know you’re lying to me.”, he says sternly. He takes a breath and in a normal tone: “I know about Tameric Corp. I’ve talked to some people who know people who work there. Unless you’re a consultant of some kind, they won’t even look at your resume as a full time employee unless you come from a top 20 university. They’re very elitist.”

“Then just pose as a consultant! I’m certain you could…”

“Mark!”, he shouted.. Another breath and then “I’m glad you have faith in me.. Not many people do. But … I didn’t become an operator for the money”, he responded. “I learned how to operate because I enjoyed doing it.. My opinion of the field is largely changing. Operating is not nearly the same now. But that’s fine with me. I’ve started to realize that the act of operating wasn’t what I was after. I’ve realized that I enjoyed the ideas behind it even more than the act itself.”

There was silence. Surely Mark had a response. He’s heard this response before.

“Jeff.. I don’t understand you, kid… You’re a bright kid and you deserve to make a lot of money but you’re not going to make it out there in the real world with an attitude like that. Listen to me, Jeff.. You have to keep your chin high. You have to believe in yourself and learn to bullshit your way into one of the these companies so you can get paid well. Now when I was your age, I had no hesitation asking double what your getting paid now, triple even. When I see someone like you …”

And he just kept ranting.. Completely unoriginal.. Same crap as before.. Jeff sets down the phone, plucks the book back off the shelf, and goes back to reading the same passage.

I had planned on writing this post immediately after the show, but things didn’t work out that way. Better late than never, I suppose

If you’re not aware, Schizophrenia has sort of become the North American version of Breakcore Gives Me Wood, for, well, breakcore. Some of the top acts have played at the last ones. The history page probably describes it better than I could.

Plus Somatic Responses was to headline Schizo 4, which was kind of a big deal only because they haven’t played in the U.S. in over 10 years. Being a huge fanboy of Somatics, and the genre, it was practically an obligation.

Thankfully it was held in Detroit, which is something of a home town for me, so I got to see some familiar streets and hang out and bunk with an old friend from high school, for most of the weekend.

Now, since there were a number of DJs coming from other parts of the U.S., many of them being broke-ass mofos took various methods of transportation, car pooling, Greyhound, what-have-you. So there ended up being multiple pre-pre-parties in neighboring cities, such as Chicago, Cleveland, and the like, with one official pre-party that was held at some small dive bar in downtown Detroit. I got to see Eustacian and Xano for the 3rd time, which was pretty cool.

Before I move on, about Detroit itself: While Philadelphia has large areas of abandoned buildings ripe for crusty punks to inhabit, where I started my squatting career, Detroit is actually worse in a sense. Even though there’s not much of a squatting scene, there are large areas of dilapidation, particularly industrial warehouses and vacant lots with crumbing houses. Even the old Tiger Stadium had a look of abandonment and disuse. And it was the middle of downtown! It was only recently, the past year or so, that it was torn down and replaced.

They even have the old train station on the flyer..!

So with that in mind, AFAICT, the organizers of Schizo 4 decided to take a shot and book the main show inside an abandoned car lot. It was two stories, plenty of room to hide a secret breakcore rave. Besides, what is art if it isn’t illegal?

But of course, as luck would have it, the show got shut down by police just hours after it started. I think I read somewhere that the building connected and adjacent to the lot was owned by a former cop? Not sure exactly, probably on Facebook or something, but regardless only a few DJs played before we were all escorted out, hands on our heads. Apparently some of the guys working the door got their asses kicked.. That sucks..

Even with this setback, I certainly hope that another Schizo is scheduled for Detroit.. It’s definitely the best city for it, IMHO.

Oh yea, afterwards, on my way back to Philly, I ran into Droon and Sickboy at the Cleveland Greyhound bus station. I really didn’t have a lot to talk about with them, unfortunately, but they were really nice guys. Reminds you that even though the genre has been around since the mid 90’s, it’s still stayed pretty fringe.