I got surprised by a sudden rain storm tonight. I don't recall the forcasters mentioning it. Then again, they're wrong most of the time anyway. As I was driving around in the wetness, I passed by the same sign I pass by every night: Stop For Pedestrian. Does this mean, I thought to myself, that I get to choose which one to stop for? If I successfully stop for one pedestrian, am I then supposed to not stop for any subsequent pedestrians? It's a good thing it's the middle of the night and there are never any pedestrians around. Maybe I should just bring along a magic marker or some spray paint and make the damn sign plural.

At the museum today I was playing a selection of cds from around the world, as I usually do when I'm in the Early Childhood Center, when a woman asked, "what is this noise?" I knew from the start that she was going to be negative person. I told her it was throat singing, and explained what it was. It didn't seem to impress her much. She then asked, as if she could stump me, "what is the educational value of this?" I looked her in the eye and, since I could see that she didn't really want information, gave her the one word answer: "multiculturalism". You can't argue with multiculturalism. Especially on Martin Luther King day. She left soon afterwards.
I used to deal with people like this all of the time when I worked in a bookstore. Why don't people just come right out and say they don't like something? I would respect that a lot more than all of this beating around the bush. People used to ask what the music was just so they could complain about it. If you don't like something, why do you care what it is? And why are people so quick to shut down to new kinds of music? Okay, only a few people who come to the museum have a problem with the music - usually people really like it, and even write down the artist(s) so they can go buy the cds. I guess it takes all kinds...

cds I listened to when nobody was around to complain about them: Tarantula Hawk "s/t", Hooo "Veil Static", Kirile Loo "Saatus", Sol Invictus "In Europa" (the second half of this contains live songs from a concert I saw the first time I went to France - so I was actually "In Europa". ha ha), and Mariza "Fado em mim"

now: Montserrat Figueras "The Voice of Emotion"