i got over 11 hours sleep last night. as they say, those sleep-wise types, those sleepians, those sleep sellers, as they say in reference to such marathon sleep sessions: i must have needed it.

now that i have some confidence in my backup planning i took advantage of the relative tranquility of a functioning workspace to actually do some work. i got nothing done yesterday on account of the day’s dilational blindness and the fallout from a nearly-sleepless night. today i revived a bunch of things that were swallowed up by the disk failure of november, including a favorite project of mine: the Godfather burial site. as far as i know i am the only human to have found the exact spot (more or less) at which Vito Corleone was ficitonally buried. it surprised me to find that no one else appeared to have pursued this bit of trivia, considering how “The Godfather” is probably among the most scrutinized and analyzed films ever made. i am ont really a fan of the film (and i have theories as to why this may be. it is obviously a fine film, but i find it comically ponderous and, paradoxically, light-weight).

at any rate, me being a Calvary Cemetery groupie i attracted an enquiry from a Godfather fanatic some years ago, asking i had ever sought out Vito Corleone’s exact burial site. i had not but i dug up my old (and mostly unwatched) DVDs of The Godfather and once I found the funeral scene I knew immediately that the scene was filmed in Section 1-West, near the mighty Johnston Mausoleum.

blhablahblahblahbla, long story short, the “then and now” photo series was linked to from Wikipedia as a Citation, proving for whatever’s sake not just that the funeral scene was filmed at Calvary, but proving exactly where the fictional burial is, this conforming to the fetish of Godfatherians for visiting every possible location at which Godfather scenes were filmed.

after the big blowout of November my Godfather burial site essay vanished, along with all millions of other pages from my sites, and someone at Wikipedia tagged the Citation as a dead link. which made sense. today, then, i figured i’d restore the link to this, but when i tried to add the link again to Wikipedia it was instantly deleted. no human being even looked at the site (if access_logs are any indication) and my IP address was flagged as an SAP or SPA or something that i do not know what it means, but i assume it means i was detected as a spammer even without the content being seen.

i have no high regard for wikipedia in the first place. look up ‘unisphere globitron” on any search engine, and you’ll find hundreds of sites by well-meaning individuals who claim that the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows is also known as “The Globitron”. the Unisphere was been known as the Globitron until a Wikipedia vandal edited the first sentence of the Unisphere article, stating that that mighty steel globe was also known as the Globitron. in the year or so that this nonsense lingered on the Wikipedia hundreds of bloggers and personal web site authors littered the world with this false information scooped from (where else?) the Wikipedia. the balance of that Wikipedia entry about the Unisphere contained other false or questionable information, though none as crass and far-reaching as the Globitron canard.

so when these august editorial boards instantly and robotically respond to my legitimate and valid bit of linkage as spam, without even looking at the fucking content, it feels bad. but you can’t take robots, or robotic editorial decision-making, too seriously, just like you can’t take the wikipedia too seriously.

it reminds me what my mother said about volunteers. she always warned me to beware of volunteers. those seemingly well-meaning people who serve on community boards and school councils. volunteers become power gluttons, my mother often said. the time spent and the responsibilities incurred by community volunteers seemed invariably to lead to demands for more authority and privilege, and for respect. this seems antithetical to the spirit of volunteerism, but the ugly side of volunteerism is alive and well at the Wikipedia, where ignorant and self-righteous computerized decision-making is followed by strange fantasies of authority and reputation.

aha, it is not really that big a deal. it’s just annoying that i got my groove back for the first time since November, and i get spit on by a Wikibot tagging me as a spammer piece of shit. i have no appetite for arguing with Wikibots. you can not win against the robots.

…..

in other news from my always-fascinating life… well, there isn’t much. maybe i should edit a wikipedia page! constant flies-on-shit to bat away!

i might try to sell the Godfather Burial Site story, though i have no idea how anyone sells stories. i know of another mainstream movie which features a scene at Calvary, and in this case the cemetery in the film has been falsely identified by everyone from the critics to the film’s producer. oh yah, i got informaaation…

…

i am expecting receipt of another $250 worth of piano music this week. the last batch proved only mildly interesting, though the John Cage collection was surprisingly strong. the Messiaen preludes seem like quality stuff, too, and the John Adams Phrygian and China Gates pieces are what they are, nothing new and nothing less. the Hindemith Ludas Tonalis is exactly what I know Hindemith to be. Gray and sincere, a skilled and accomplished composer, I have never fully warmed up to the guy, and Ludas Tonalis feels like one of the composer’s greatest efforts.

effort.

that reminds me, i never got too far with the Art of Fugue edition i got at Dowling Music a few weeks ago. that, too, is brainiac material over anything else. christ, was Hindemith a re-incarnation of Bach?