SATURDAY 08:01
	("It was already Saturday when you got to bed, boss."
	 "It's not a new day for me till I've slept and gotten up, Loiosh.")

Up & planning day's schedule. Not that I wanted to be up this early: I
set the radio for 9, but at 7:55 I was awake; so while I'm scheduling
my day I'd better plan a nap in there sometime.
 
Select three buttons to wear: 

    Music is my drug of choice
	This is a custom jobbie I had Nancy Lebovitz make a couple of
for me. She added it to her catalog and found it very popular.

	The fourth glyph (counting from the left) is the Hebrew letter 
shin, the initial of "Shabbat", meaning the Sabbath. "Thank God it's 
Shabbat". I had Nancy make me one of these, too, but I couldn't find 
it when packing, so I printed out the text and taped the paper onto 
another button.

    You can't tell a book by its movie
 
10:02

Linguistics and language theme circle, led by Heather Rose Jones &
yours truly

 Heather, Let Languid Language Lick Like Lazy Light (first line), a
magnetic refrigerator sonnet. (You say, Huh?) Composed with
"refrigerator poetry" magnets. She says she likes working within the
constraints
 me, Yogh & Ash & Thorn (Faber, ttto Simon Bellamy's setting of
Kipling's "A Tree Song", aka "Oak and Ash and Thorn"). Cat wrote this
song about three letters of Old English that are no longer in
use. While singing, I hold up a page showing the three of them in very
large type so the non-linguists would know what she means when she
describes their shapes:

 me, Philological Waltz (Flanders & Swann). Suggested for this circle
by my son back home.
 Heather, Dead Languages
 me, Both /k/s Now (Kevin Wald)
 Heather, a Hittite poem read in Hittite and beginning "Kuis=mu
ussaras menahhanda tiyazi". (I'm delighted to hear the laryngeals.)
 me, Editors' Waltz
 Heather, Editorial Advice
 Lee Gold, The Typo (a poem by Tom Digby)
 Blake Hodgetts, selected verses of his "The Reader" (published in 
Xenofilkia # 88), including the phonemic-ciphertext verse based on 
Damon Knight's "Babel II".
 Blake, Say Again, Tower (Faber)
 Heather, Y Caidoddin (SCAdian praise poem she wrote in Medieval Welsh,
gloriously alliterative)
 Blake, a bit of a Welsh song, Ap Siencyn
 Golds, Puritan Witch Hunt (about blocking web sites on the basis of
single words without regard for their meaning in context; e.g.,
blocking on "breast" blocks sites for cancer survivors & cooks as well
as porn)
 Robin Baylor, Punctuation's Hard to Do (Lynn Gold ttto "Breaking Up
is Hard to Do")
 Ben Newman, "Trad and Anon"
 Angelica & Athrylis Sather Hodgetts, Kodomo no Omocha (the name of an
anime series), a Japanese parody of a Japanese song, Omocha no
Chachacha
 Heather, another magnetic refrigerator poem, of which she says " No
title -- it's in my files as 'ConJose Fridge #1'. (Linguistic
connection: surreal speculations on dinosaur language.)"
 Fred Capp, Vem Kan Seigle, a Swedish lullaby, followed by an English
version. Blake then picks up the invitation to sing the French
version, from Fred's handwritten text.
 me, The Sad Tale of the Not So Dislexic Bank Robber (Brian Biddle)
 
What a gas to be filking with three other linguists: not just Heather,
but Blake, whom I hadn't known before, and Ben.

 To the Dealers' Room. And limit myself, regretfully, to 2 CDs (Julia
Ecklar's Divine Intervention, and Cindy McQuillin's Witch's Dance), a
replacement for the weatherbeaten Darwin fish on my bumper, & a See's
chocolate bar with almonds. (See's candies are a regional delight that
Rene and I miss back East.)
 
12:45
 After tea & cookies in the consuite, down into Carla Ulbrich's
concert, which is already in progress. She's as good & as much fun as
I remember from the housefilk at Spencer & Persis's a couple of years
ago; thank God she's back in good health! A lot of her songs in this
set are about that experience, but ose? no way!
 
  I Have To Kill You Now  
  The Man Who Changes the Lightbulbs  
  A Toasted Chicken Sandwich (written by her cousin) (I came in during
this one)
  Prednisone (about the side effects of this medication). From the
audience: "That's one of the most medically accurate filks I have ever
heard!"-- Kathleen Sloane, MD (and Interfilk representative)
  Little Brown Jug, a filk of the traditional tune... about a kidney
function test. ROFL
  The Wedgie
  What If Your Butt Was Gone? (parody of her own What If Your
Girlfriend Was Gone?)
 
13:21 
I need a nap.

14:38 
To the con suite again. 
 Munchies and impromptu filking. One of the people running the
consuite -- Devon Black? -- is a baking goddess!!!  I hand over four
smaller boxes of maple candy for the consuite (or maybe I did it
earlier).

I admire Eric Wilner's living shoulder ornament Tinga: a parrot-like
bird, a sun conure, whose species name is Aratinga solstitialis. Eric
gives me Tinga's business card.

 I sing a couple of my "one-verse wonders" (verse? one wonders), 
"Body Art in Jewish Law" and "Seldom in Chicago".

15:05
 Prepare for my concert, and get the word that "two-fers [the program
item preceding it] are running 10-15 minutes late". I am wearing my
"alternate MASSFILC symbol" T-shirt. Our official symbol involves some
musical notes (with faces) on a staff, cowering in fear from a note
with fangs. Some time ago I was inspired by a "MASS PIKE" sign to the
Massachusetts Turnpike and made up a MASSFILC version of it.
Other MASSFILCers liked it, and we had T-shirts made of it as well as
of the official design.

The Interfilk Auction is scheduled right after my concert, and the
silent auction table is set up along the side of the room. Along with
my music and El Kabong, I bring my auction items down: the bag o'
buttons and the box of maple sugar like the one I gave the Thiesens. I
put a minimum bid of $10 on the buttons; any item that gets three
silent bids will go into the voice auction.

My set, all by me except as noted:
  The Sounds Of Consonance (also below). (Almost as soon as Persis 
Thorndike of Interfilk invited me to be Interfilk guest here, I had 
this Evil Idea.)
  The Definition Of Filk (ttto Do It Yourself, Bill Sutton)
  Magnificent Star
  The Ballade of Losers' Night (words by Poul Anderson)
  The Passenger
  Massachusetts Tangle (MASSFILCer Gary McGath, ttto Masochistic
Tango, Tom Lehrer. Included in Gary's _Mad Scientist's Song Book_,
available from MASSFILC)
  DHMO Song (ttto Battle Hymn of the Republic)
  Secondhand Smoke
  The Chemist's Drinking Song (MASSFILCer Jack Carroll, ttto Irish
Washerwoman. Included in _The NESFA Hymnal, Vol. II_, available from
NESFA)
  Con From Argo (ttto Banned From Argo, Leslie Fish)
  A King in Krothering

			***

As promised above:


The Sounds of Consonance
Mark A. Mandel Copyright 2002
ttto McNamara's Band

  The friendly folks at Interfilk have sent me as your guest
  I've promised in return that I will do my filkin' best
  So while I'm here in front of you I'd like to take this chance
  To give you my impression of the sounds of Consonance
  
  There's...
  P & B & F & V & M & W
  T, D, N, S, Z, L, R, & both TH-es, too
  There's CH, SH, Y, & J, & S in "casual"
  And when I add NG, G, K, & H, I've got them all.

    [tune of last 2 lines]
  I've catalogued in English every consonantal sound
  But if I start on Klingon, all the front row will be drowned!

[I was actually prepared with the consonants of Klingon, but didn't sing them:]

  There's pIp & beb & vav & mum, & then there's waw' as well,
  tat, nIn, SuS, & DoD & tlhetlh, & likewise rur & lel.
  There's chech & jaj & yay', & also ngong & ghogh & HoH,
  And then, to finish up the set, there's 'I' & qaq & QoQ.
  
  I've rattled off the consonants of English and KlingON,
  But if you want the vowels, you'll have to send me to VowelCon!

[AFAIK there are no canonical names for the Klingon
letters/phonemes. I managed to find a canonical monosyllabic word
beginning and ending with each consonant, also taking some care that
similar consonants, like /p/ and /b/, would have different vowels in
their names.]

			***

Friday < ------ > Saturday, part 2
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