The music: Starfish Prime (6:09)

Boortz caught onto this today, and it bears repeating. Illinois Rep. Annazette Collins made the mistake of suggesting that elementary-school aged children ought to be taught about gun safety, and now the harpies are circling.

Mayor Daley, who's always had a rather sloppy understanding of civil liberties, called the idea, "the silliest position I’ve ever heard taken."

According to "activist priest" Michael Pfleger:

That’s like saying we might as well sell drugs legally (…) We don’t want access to guns. We have children dying in this city. We’re talking about teaching kids in grammar school how to shoot guns? That’s crazy!

I guess I must have grown up in about the craziest environment imaginable, then. It's a wonder I turned out sane.

The music: Dispersion Array #1 (5:48)

This is a modified Twiggy by Kevin Siebold of Krappy Guitars. After playing it for the last two days, I can't bring myself to refer to it as a Krappy bass, so I'm going to call it a Siebold.

The following letter was sent to Attorney General Holder in response to his comments about a renewed Assault Weapons Ban. It was not sent by a gun-rights group. It was not sent by the NRA.

Nope; it was sent by 65 Democratic Congressmen. Read on.

Today's piece is a modest one. Fourteen notes in just under eight seconds. It's recorded to loop seamlessly when repeated, so it can run as long as the equipment (or listener) holds out.

Drawing I (0:08), basic loop.

Drawing I (02:23), looped with minor treatment.

I'd love to give a pretentious conceptual reason for the brevity or structure, but this one was just a product of chance.

The music: The Miss Enigma Firecracker Pageant (4:08).

The story: The drive from Atlanta to Jacksonville takes you through a long stretch of rural sprawl. The default route is to take I-75 down to the state line, then cut across on I-10. It's a lonely, dreary stretch, and the lack of scenery makes it feel far longer than the six hours or so it takes.

A more scenic route is to cut east from Tifton to Waycross along Highway 82, then south on US-23/19. Instead of a monotony of swamps and alligator farms, the landscape is varied and lively in a quiet sort of way. Highway 82 runs through cotton fields and National Forest reserves, low but hilly country dotted with small towns it would be unfair to call quaint.

Lots of bass players like 5 and 6-string instruments. Me, I've never felt particularly confined by the usual 4-string arrangement. That doesn't mean I'm not up for a little experimentation; I just don't feel that I've exhausted all the possibilities the traditional setup allows.

That said, it was time for some new strings, so I decided to try an idea I'd been kicking around for awhile. Instead of the usual E-A-D-G tuning, I've gone a 4th higher, stringing the bass to A-D-G-C. The nice thing about this tuning is that I cross easily up into the lower and middle registers of a cello (or guitar) without losing much of the lower range or the sound of a bass.

While the strings are new and spangly-sounding, I figured I'd whip out a little bluegrass romp while I decide whether this tuning is a novelty or a permanent thing. It's sort of a low-rent riff on Copland.

Strålende Nynne (Radiant Hum)