cce blog

may

so it's may already. i've been a bad blogger again, eek. i suppose i was busy.

let's see, i've been to some good concerts lately:

Berio's Epiphanies, Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements and Beethoven's Fifth at Carnegie Hall. The Berio was one of those lovely 60's avant-garde pieces they never play anymore, featuring an orchestra, extra percussion, and a tricky atonal female vocal with texts from james joyce, proust, beckett, a few others. the stravinsky was nice too. the beethoven made everyone happy after all the scary epiphanies.

i also went out to see apples in stereo at maxwell's last week. but i was more impressed with apollo sunshine, who played before them, doing really great psychedelic-pop a la flaming lips, but with just a three-man band (the singer / bass player on guitar & keyboard too) and lots of rawk.

finally, looking abroad, i'll grumble about the battleships in victoria harbo[u]r. i was in beijing last month re-interpreted the basic law to clarify that the timetable for democratic reform was theirs to decide. i flew to HK a few days later, and left just as the first big protest started.

more recently they pushed it further, ruling out democracy ("unnecessarily", as wash post says) completely for 2007/8, as i'd guess to prevent potential embarrassment close to the olympics.

then, earlier this week they sent warships through the harbor! i don't buy that they're trying to drum up patriotic spirit; it seems more like they're trying to let HK know who's really in charge. plus, they get to put taiwan on edge:

'We are always on call,'' said Yao Xingyuan, commander of the battle group. ''If necessary, we have the ability to preserve the stability of the Taiwanese political situation.''

commie bastards.

the people's daily bluntly put it best:

Qiao said at the Thursday's seminar that it is very important to correctly understand "One Country, Two Systems." "One Country" is the premise on which "Two Systems" are implemented. Without "One Country," there would be no "Two Systems."

hrmm ... i guess he does have a point; the 1:2 country-to-systems ratio doesn't really reflect the situation on the ground anymore. perhaps it should be "one country, 1.5 systems"? that's the same ratio as 2 countries, 3 systems -- what you get if you include taiwan, i suppose.

okay, enough babbling about china. tomorrow's my birthday, apparently, so i guess i need to do one of those year-in-review things like i did last year ... dreading it a bit, though. okay.

p.s. speaking of my birthday, i want a swopper chair. apparently it makes your back straighter while you're sitting, and yogis like it, so that must be a good thing.

Posted by cce at May 5, 2004 11:05 AM | TrackBack