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Friday, August 10, 2007
So I studied at the university for two hours today after rehearsal. The yellow wall and dingy atmosphere makes you want to study: The quicker you get to it, the sooner you can leave. Let me rehash some things for you that I know will be fascinating: An organum is, well, apparently, it's a word that comes accompanied with a red zig-zagging line, but is also a type of polyphony where a voice is added to an existing chant.I did that for my benefit entirely so that I might remember this later. I'm going to be this selfish as these forthcoming posts unravel themselves, so you might not want to come back for a week or so. Really. I've noticed some of my scholarly friends have "Word of the Day" links on their web pages. I like Word of the Day things, but I like it best when it's a word that no one knows, describing something you probably will never need to describe, and will impress no one because the opportunity will never come up. Let me give you an example. 8W -- Word of the Day: Cryptorchidism. (Another word that comes underlined in red. Do I know more words than my word processor?! How is this annoyance possible?) Anyway, cryptorchidism is when one or both of your testicles fail to descend from your abdomen to your scrotum. I think I can stop using the word "your" now. Because I'm definitely not going to say "my". Isn't it neat that there's actually a word for the bifurcated sentence "Please don't be alarmed; I do actually have one or both of my balls, but they have failed to come down and are currently making their orbit around my stomach area"? Apparently there's a word for anything! So the next time someone tells you that he or someone he or she knows can't find one of his testicles, you can ask in an educated fashion whether he is a cryptorchid or if he's just got that kind of luck. Thursday, August 09, 2007
I really have to start listening to my body. Every time I eat KFC, I feel I'm just one hobbling step closer to tripping into obesity, my face feels like it's veiled by a thin layer of grease, and my heart shakes its proverbial fist at me. I didn't even enjoy it, to tell you the truth: I ate KFC's too-salty Country-Fried Steak and I heartily don't recommend it. Neither does my heart, apparently.It's almost midnight and I just got back from a concert. With a big chunk of the day given to rehearsal, I'm trying to funnel any remaining soupcon of energy into studying / working / writing at night. I feel my mind is slowly getting more nimble and I'm polishing off the rust: Lubricate to lucubrate. And, as such, I've been doing some philosophizing. It happens when you're supposed to be doing more pressing things. But I feel that in the froideur of relationships gone wrong, more than I can count, I've learned many things about myself, of which I can count (unfortunately, on one hand): 1) I'm really not ready for a relationship and 2) that's probably not going to stop me from getting into another one. (Okay, two fingers.) Let me talk about one of my faults. See, in a relationship, I have to win. I always have to win the point or an argument. It speaks unequivocally to my self-esteem when I can't concede a point; I feel a strong man can let himself lose a point even when there's no way he's wrong. Alongside this, I've learned that you shouldn't mention it when you're right. Being right is somehow an annoying property when you're in a relationship. Another thing I learned is that when your girlfriend is yelling at you, you don't point out grammatical errors or poor diction. No matter how much it bothers you. This is not the time. You can do that in an Email of the Week. But not here. Even if the word she used was "unconsiderate". (I just typed that and a big red zig-zagging line popped up. Am I OCD? I can't stand it! Someone put an "in" there.) (I hate typing things in Word. That red "X" they put at the bottom of the window over my document is so annoying. I like typing several hundred words and seeing a green check mark. I almost stopped using Word for two months after they refused to recognize that "ichthyoid" was a word.) (Anyway, you see what I'm saying, though? Don't you just have to say something when something like that screams out at you? Or "uncompatible" or "unorganized" or "pluralizing" or saying "on accident" or saying "you feel badly" or...) (I wish I could speak within parentheses in real life.) (Maybe I'd be happily married already.) It seems I've conditioned myself since the age of four in this mindset. I mean, a mindset that was very attuned to girls. In reality, I had no game when I was four. Or twenty-four. But the point is that I can tell you which girl I liked since kindergarten. Pre-school even. In pre-school, there was a blonde-haired girl named Nicole who I thought was beautiful. I told my dad this when he was giving me a bath, and I remember him running out of the bathroom with a goofy smile to tell my mom. Trust-shattering. Kindergarten, I liked this girl called Kerry. Or Carrie. I don't remember, I couldn't spell when I was five. My sister told me she looked like a rodent; maybe I didn't have discriminating taste at five, either. In first grade, I liked Elizabeth for one week because she wore pretty ear rings that one time. Second grade, I was in a Grade 2/3 split class, so I fell for an older woman: Her name was Julie, a blue-eyed brunette who was outgoing, talkative, and just plain nice (she was plain, but nice). Third and fourth grade, I think it was Jessica Parker -- another blonde. And from fifth grade to ninth, basically until I moved to another city, I liked the red-headed Andrea Wallace. All of these girls had something in common: They wouldn't give me the time of day. Actually, You can see now why I, I mean, people call me the Eighth Wonder: So it's obvious I liked girls before I even knew how to hold in my drool. But the four years I had a crush on the red-head proved a certain type of longevity. My infatuation was built on hope -- not necessarily in being loved. (Cue sad music.) With that, I've decided I will be single until God bonks me on the head and tells me that this certain girl is "the one". Or, perhaps more correctly, when he bonks me on the head and tells me I'm finally done growing up. Friday, August 03, 2007
Well, well. It looks like we've gotten enough people coming by that the Email of the Week can be re-instated. However, it seems no one reading knows how to fix the archives. That stinks. Anyway, the most recent email:"dear adrian 8W so glad your writing again n i dont remember you doing this this often either dont stop keep it up. =p i have been checking you out n want to see your quartet perform but one question how come you dont smile? yvonne, vancouver, bc, canada" Dear Yvonne, I would make my normal comments about your lack of punctuation and run-on sentences (actually, with a semi-colon and colon there would have been no run-ons) but why do I continue to beat a dead horse? I also like your generous use of the "enter" button and free expression of complete anarchy to English rule; next time, I will give you some rice paper and a paint brush so you can write a proper haiku. The receipt of your email is almost providential -- or at least a little eerie -- because this exact point came up in a discussion of emails today while my quartet was rehearsing: Yuri was talking about how someone we know emailed her with no periods but new lines, no pronouns but capitalized verbs, and, well, no email but telegram. And here I am chasing away readers again. Sorry: Thank you for writing. I assume you are referring to the quartet photo on the website. To answer your question, being in a quartet means that if everyone was picky about how they looked in each shot, there'd be no picture at all. That's that. Pretty simple. (The complete truth: It's the only picture where I don't have a double chin the size of a bloated bullfrog.) Okay. Onto serious matters: I am trying desperately to study for my Music History placement exam but I honestly can't think of anything more boring right now. (Well, other than reading what I just wrote.) My daily pace is being shunted constantly by this nagging feeling that I should at least try to care about 14th century polyphony and Italian madrigals. How do I make this relevant to the non-musicians out there? It's like you bought a ticket to see an action movie only to realize everyone's fighting in tai chi. And everyone's David Carradine. But a thousand times slower, worse, and more boring. A little like that. Tomorrow, I play a wedding gig. I don't play a lot of these anymore, but I used to when I was a teenager. I think I must have been to at least 600 weddings in my lifetime -- and been actually attended as a guest, without my cello, to three. With my cello: 597. Including my sister's. But that was okay. Because that's where I met Valerie. And found out she was not only a monster on the violin, but hilarious, too. She would play something really slow and then, while we were still in the middle of the piece, whisper a question like, "Faster?" Thinking she was asking me whether the piece goes at a more conventionally quick pace, I nod, and she proceeds to take the repeat at warp speed three million. While giggling. Into the microphones above her head so everyone can know how much fun she's having. I'm fragmenting my sentences. I'm worse than Yvonne. I played a wedding one time with three other players at the Conservatory. Everything was fine until this one section where we're supposed to play Bach's Air in G while the congregation is praying. This is when Eric, the first violinist, flips to a different edition of Bach's Air in his binder: this one in D major. The rest of us are in G. This is the one time nobody is doing anything but closing their eyes and concentrating, praying for the well-being and joy of the couple to be. After the guy says, "Let's close our eyes and pray silently," we introduce them to one of the spookiest chords imaginable. And the thing is, nobody adjusted. I figured Eric was going follow the rest of us, but I guess he thought because he had the melody he shouldn't change, which is a valid point. But I didn't know at the time that he had flipped to a different edition: I just thought he really, really sucked for two bars and was going to realize this and unsuck as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we went another five seconds before any of us realized the issue, and when we did, we had no idea where to find this mystery edition Eric was playing. Anyway, we eventually all dropped out except for Eric. Let's hope this doesn't happen tomorrow. I think it's on the playlist. Okay, bedtime. Someone email me to tell me they can fix the archives. I don't care if you tell me in iambic pentameter. Wednesday, August 01, 2007
What is novelty? Why do I feel compelled to tell you that yesterday I walked on the train and the driver's window was closed; she told me to go ahead and sit down because the machine on her train was malfunctioning and wouldn't accept money. The first thought I had was how we could make this thing malfunction a little more times per month. I didn't have a second thought, so, true to that expression, I sat down.On my way back, the friendly man at the ticket booth waved me through the turnstile. He wouldn't take my money either. He just told me to go on ahead. It's like I had a T-shirt with "It's My Birthday Today" written on the chest. (It might have had something to do with how, the day before, I had absent-mindedly shown him my August pass, forgetting it wasn't August yet. After he reminded me it was, in fact, July, it took me a good five minutes to get the correct change from the nearby machines to pay the cash fare. And I ended up asking him to break a dollar for me.) So, my question again, is what compels me to write something like this? I really wanted to tell you this, guys. But there was no point and I just had to get it out. I've noticed this is something I've fallen habit to as of late. It's as if the moment I have the spotlight, I metastasize into a feverish-handed attacabottoni and I pummel you with breathless detail about the most frivolous events in my day. So what if I had two free rides on the Muni today? Unless this was some bland exercise in seeing how long I can talk about something for, I think we were all better off had I not written this. Anyway, last night, my sister and I were talking to each other via BlackBerry Messenger. I have one for the next couple of days because of, well, let's say because of a stroke of luck. I think that I know where this habit of saying random things has come from, or at least fostered: My sister and I message each other and while she's answering one of my questions, another topic has come up that has immediately interested me. So after I've finished saying my piece about, I don't know, cheese, I ask her if she likes cheese, and if so, how about cheese served with select fruits, and speaking of organic foods, does she know of any foods that are honest-to-God, naturally blue? Not blueberries because they are essentially purple, as are eggplants. And why, may I ask, are they called eggplants? Let me tell you other funny names for vegetables I came across while dining with my quartet at a Brazilian restaurant: Yucca. Has she had yucca? Why would someone eat "yucca"? Why call it that? What kind of advertising methodology would that fall under? Reverse psychology? Oh, by the way, how old is her husband again? And, I forgot to say, at the Brazilian restaurant, it was nuts. The quartet took one of our mentors to dinner and, during our nice meal, out of nowhere, two vampire ladies dressed in nothing but nipple-guards, G-strings, and huge peacock-like feathers fanning out of their heads ran out from the back and started up a very -- from what I could gather -- urgent dance number. I don't know if they were scantily clad sous-chefs who couldn't speak and were trying to communicate to us some frantically ecstatic message via their hips about how good our meals were going to be, or if the Brazilian restaurant always hired strippers as a lurid thank-you to their Saturday night diners... Speaking of Brazil, did you know that I don't know anyone from there? They're like Mongols. I just don't know any. Except at this place called Flipper's where I was once chatting with the waitress and I asked if she was Chinese and she said, "No, I'm Mongolian." But then again, I wouldn't say I know her. I saw her that one time. My sister tries to respond as well as she can, while talking at length about each stupid topic I have just haphazardly introduced to the conversation. It's like I've walked into her house and just started throwing all my things everywhere; she's running around talking to me while picking my hat off the ground and my jacket off her lamp. BlackBerries, I've found, are not the most efficient way to hold this type of conversation. For one thing, the buttons are really, really small. After seriously an hour and a half of us "chatting" on our BlackBerries, we both realize we're really, really hyper and our thumbs are sorer than that time I came second in a Super Nintendo Street Fighter Competition (true story). My sister just calls me and we talk for another half an hour, realizing that the whole time we've spent talking on our BlackBerries, we could have efficiently communicated with spoken words in 15 minutes. Any other sane person, or not as loving, would have put their foot down and shouted, "STOOPPP!!!! You're driving me crazy!" But because my sister doesn't do this, my mind whirs with unrelenting activity and her thumbs hurt. Because I have an outlet and a very lovingly attentive listener, I start needing the traffic of expressing completely useless garbage to everyone else around me. Keep the love coming; it's the only thing keeping me sane. 
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