orange putty = orange alert!

["Nathan Snider" <snider@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: "Eloy Anzola" <eloy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: { OT } Something Suspicious Is in the Air
>=20
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16791-2003Mar23.html

In a somewhat more on-topic vein, I was out making field recordings with
my roommate last week when we got stopped by a police officer, who
informed us that "it's code orange out here" and told us in no uncertain
terms that we'd best get moving.

Who would have guessed that two guys in headphones affixing wires to a
traffic box with orange putty would be suspicious, right?  I've been
hassled by police and security personnel while making recordings before,
but usually they become a lot more friendly, even interested, after
hearing what I'm doing.  This was the first time they've insisted that I
stop.  At the time, I was mostly just amused by the level of paranoia
exhibited by St. Louis' Finest, but the whole thing's kind of
depressing, given the possibility that I might have been hauled in if my
skin was a little darker.

Has anyone else had their microsoundish pursuits directly affected by
the current political situation?  Have your Max/MSP patches been
confiscated...  your Supercollider classified as a WMD? =20

I have this image in my head of jack-booted thugs ransacking an
apartment, the floor littered with Mego CDs and the complete works of
Gilles Deleuze.  In the background, some poor guy is strapped to a desk
chair while a fellow wearing a trenchcoat and a fedora paces
indifferently around the wreckage of his studio asking "Kyma - is that a
Pakistani name?"=20

-n=20