Hey! Don't you go getting all Miss Thang up in here, TooNuts! You started it. Put yourselves in my posish. How'd you like to get some random, possibly phoney, legalese jargon about taking your hard-loaned money? What if I sent you a thing saying, "Hello, I am a powerful Doctor in Florida, this is my company: (insert made up front company here). You should know that I can get you for a million billion Euros (about a billion trillion US dollars), and also eat your soul. Please contact me and we'll talk (meaning I will take down your personal information and use it as I please... did you say you are a twenty-some college girl living ALL alone in the woods? That's very good; we will be able to find some sort of compromise, I'm sure). What if I sent it to your Myspace? Pretty sure you'd delete that. Things like that are right up there with "**~$$SeXiiiMoNiE$$~** sent you a friend request. Do you accept?"
 
And that's no bouffant. That's how my hair grows. That's right; it's a birth defect. Have a nice, steaming cup of guilt.

Annnnyway. I'm glad we've all gotten our feelings out in the open now. Perhaps we can finally move on from the pain of this whole experience, and, someday, maybe even eat fondue together. For now, however, I need to go practice.

Ta,

yours, etc.

Just when I was starting to feel all right about this gig, having seen that the audience seemed quite happy the first night, and on the second having become familiar enough with the conductor and the way the musical runs that I am finally getting comfortable in the uncomfortable provided setting (did I mention before that the "pit" is a tent about ten feet downwind of the two skankiest out houses that side of the Mohawk? And that they make us literally ill, with headaches and nausea?), I learned last night, to my shock and dismay, that we, the Pit, need to "clean up your act, we can hear you talking and laughing when you make mistakes, and it's just completely unprofessional, you all should be ashamed! We've worked too hard on this ffor you guys to mess it up-- Cut the crap!" Quoth the actress playing Wicked Step Sister No. 2.

Now, at the risk of waxing cynical, the whole purpose of this production is to give amateur actors two weeks in which they can prove to the towns people how great they really are. In other words, this is a huge ego-fest that is so out of control that they actually needed to "hire" musicians to come play music for them to sing, badly, over. We have all been treated like hired help, domestics, subjected to conditions and work parameters for which actual Help would demand extra pay, and, hour for hour are making under twenty-five percent federal minimum wage (we're being paid about 1.22 USD per hour). I guess I have to say it: You're gonna need to pay me a little more to care.

Honestly. I'm not even going to address the all ridiculousness she said, because there was quite a lot of it. But ironically, while she was yelling at us about language, she herself was cursing much louder and more audibly than any of us had, and she was cursing AT people, much worse than the occasional slip of the tongue. Unprofessional? Honey, we're working in ALL BLACK SEMI FORMAL in JULY. If we're talking, it's because the conductor is having to shout last minute adjustments because you people can't count to four in your heads without hurting yourselves. The only thing that's not professional is that we took this gig in the first place. Professionals would've been insulted. And furthermore, if by "crap" you're talking about our morale in general, maybe that's because you're looking at a group of musicians who've worked very hard at being musicians, who've been suckered into this moronic Mickey Mouse production so that YOU can strut around on stage and feel important for a while. Why don't YOU cut the crap. There it is! Like ten feet upwind of the pit. In fact, we'd really appreciate it if you could cut that crap, because it's making us ill.

Whew.

All right. I am sorry that you've all borne witness to this ranting. But there is little else for me to report, as this stupid thing is taking up just about all my free time for the next nine days.

In other news, my cat, Albert, who is wonderful, has gotten a hair cut. I hope to have pictures soon.

CORRECTION: It turns out that we're actually being paid 150 USD, not 50, which works out to about 3.66 an hour or about 71% minimum wage. Still not much, but at least now I am not going to lose money on this gig. (Gas is going to cost about 65 USD, so before I was actually working for something like negative thirty cents an hour. This is much less of a bummer now.)

So the last day of my jury duty, I get an "urgent" call from a girl that I have a notoriously hard time saying "no" to asking if I could please do this musical for a couple weekends. They need a person to fill in first violin. "Um." I said, "I play flute." But they wanted me to play the part anyway, just on flute. She says it's a paying gig, and I need money, so I say, "sure." This is because I'm stupid. I need money because I'm stupid, and I took the gig because I'm stupid.

It turns out that there are rehearsals practically every night of the week from seven o'clock to midnight, with the show running from 7:00 to ten-ish Thursday through Sunday this weekend and Friday through Sunday next weekend. And the pay is fifty bucks. That's not going to cover the cost of gas. There are mosquitoes everywhere, because it's outside, the director has no down beat (e.g. everything looks like Beat One, so there's no telling where in a measure you are), the pit orchestra is choking on Deet, and the music itself is not terribly interesting. The only redeeming quality about this gig is that peridically, one of the keyboards (there are three; we don't have a full orchestra, so the keyboards have to fill in a lot) will get out of hand and start beat boxing, or repeating the sound byte "Dictionary." I mean, this is a terribly Mickey Mouse production. If it weren't for the fact that the girl who is putting the show on IS, in fact, the girl who is putting this thing on, the whole thing would be stupid.

Say it ain't so Jan, Say it ain't so... I'm so freaking sad right now. I just... I dunno. I mean.... WTF man? Ya root for a guy for nearly a decade and then.......sniff......

 

I've been delayed in posting because the cable was out for a while, and everything-- phone, T.V. and Internet-- are through the cable company. It's been a bit damp here in Upstate NY these past days.

Note: The river was so swollen when I went out the other day that the waves were lapping up onto the path. Totally thought I might die. Lightning, thunder, rain so heavy and thick that it was like getting sand blasted and I couldn't keep my eyes open, and, I found out later, 65 mile-per-hour winds. It was a thirty-eight mile ride, and I had planned to call a cab at the turn around point, but when I got there the sun came out and it was nice so I started back. Natch, it happened that that was same the direction the storm was going, so I had it the whole way back too. I was SO burned out after that. I slept most of the next day.

I'll be back to post the Tejjjas Album later. Right now, I just want to go sob awhile.

 

Oh Jan... Why? WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHY? GAH!

Every six years my foot. I've only been voting two years and the Jury Duty got me. Not even, because they actually got me...um... it might have been last May. "Dear Toad. [They said] You're up. Be there or die. Your number is 270." But I had tests or something, so I wrote down the number I was supposed to call, and left it at that. When I didn't die, I just sort of forgot about it.

Fast forward to March. "Dear Toad. Be there on the 23rd or you're in for it." I couldn't make it then. I had midterms, so Jury Duty was just not acceptable at the time. Something had to be done. I called the number. "Jury Duty," I said, "It's just not going to happen." "All right, we'll put you down for June instead." "When in Ju--?" But the Jury Dutieer was already gone.

As it happened, Jury Duty sent me another letter. I had been rescheduled for the week starting June Fifth. I have Two rehearsals and a concert with the Capital Region Wind Ensemble that week. That's Mr B's pro version of the S College WInd Ensemble. Like, Wind Ensemble 10.3.9 or Wind Ensemble XP or something. Sigh.

"NO JURY DUTAW!!" I called back in my best Cartman, "Bad Jury Dutaw! You know ah kent git awnmyah jhat week. Nah stop it! Bad Jury Dutah!"

I ground my teeth in anticipation until the next letter arrived, which it did just now. Well, today-now. Right now is almost midnight so that would be kinda silly. For the mailman to have delivered it right now. Right-O.

"Dear Toad." I held my breath. "The week starting July Third, and that's final. We know where you live."

"Listen. Jury Duty, dahling, I don't need this. I have classes starting soon, and that week is sure to be midterms (everything's twice as fast in the summer). I'm supposed to fly down to a wedding in Florida on the seventh (well, actually, I can't anyway because I'm poor, and in college... is that redundant?). Ja'ar is going to be in the states then. I'm painting my bedroom. I have to reshingle the Grand'rents' Camp up on Sacandaga. My kidneys are failing. I have a club foot. I won't be a fair juror. I am prone to violent outbursts in courtrooms. My leg is broke-- I can't see well-- I have small pox-- T.B.-- I'm a Leper! A Leper!"

"No. July third or else."

This better not run over more than a week. I feel so used. Like Jury Duty tricked me. "Don't you want to vote? C'mon, have a say in the political world... Just, just sign there, yeeeeah... don't worry, we won't need you for at least six years.....mwahahhahahaa...ha." Touché, Jury Duty, Touché.

 

LINKDOM:

The Jury Duty

In Belgium

The Movie

No Exemption For You.

So.. I was just minding my own business, watching a dog show documentary on the National Geographic Channel, and the credits start to roll at the end. Who should the narrator be but Al Trautwig. Swear to gawd.

Yo kids. It's been months. And it will be a couple more. I am currently involved in a monster semester, and at the same time I have more than doubled the amount of time I spend practicing (flute). I haven't deleted this blog yet though, because I really would like to pick it up again once the summer hits. I'm supposed to have Jury Duty on the fifth of June a couple weeks after the semester ends. Expect an irritated rant around then. Until then, this is your ol' pal, Toad, signing off. Officially.

Peace Out.

Ahhh, the holidays. Here they are once more. The smokey odor of fireplaces wafts down to nose-level from suburbs full of chimneys, a last minute pine tree strapped to the top of a family station wagon zips by my window as it's shuttled to its rightful living room, and christmas lights that have been waiting in the wings since last July are reattached to homes for another eight-month stint. I watch The Neighbors battle their icy driveways, armed only with snow shovels. When they go rubber-side up, I laugh. As one of them cracks his shins against his bumper, I crack open my third ale of the day. (I should mention that The Neighbors decided long ago that I was THAT girl, and thus should be avoided and shunned at all cost and every opportunity. I refer the unbelieving reader back to earlier posts of this summer.) Ahaha... ahh, yes, that makes me happy on the inside.

I did not go Christmas shopping until yesterday. Always a good idea. My family said "No Presents This Year." This combined with the strenuous last month of the semester gave a false sense of exemption from Winter Insanity '05. And then I remembered that when they said "No Presents" last year, I was the only one who didn't buy anything. The year before that as well. And, wait, don't I have to get stuff for other people too...? Who feels like a schmuck? Is it me? Oh, why, yes, it is.

So, yesterday morning, I rolled my stiff, sore self off of K's (Percussion) couch (it had been a long night...), crawled into my car, and headed away down Rt. 5 to hit up the Barnes & Nobles. I love B&N on so many levels. For one, they have an impressive selection for a big corporate store, not only in books (duh), but also in music, and, surprisingly so, in DVDs. I wish I could've kept my shopping confined to B&N.

At my next my destination, a large, scary, corporate sort of hell-mouth, that must remain unnamed (no, not, Whale-Mart either), I had a mission. Monkey footie pyjamas. I wandered for hours looking for these elusive be-primated pyjamas. I knew I had seen them there before. Up Household Appliances, down Car Tires, cutting through the Bikes of the Damned section, I finally found myself lost somewhere between Shrubbery and Riding Lawnmowers. Cold, alone, rapidly despairing, I was about to run for the nearest exit, in this case the large potted plant section adjacent to the Mowers. Instead, I fell to my knees, through my arms skyward, and, in my most beseeching voice, cried out to the heavens above, "GAHHHHHHH! I just want to get these deuced monkey footie pyjamas so that I can go home and go to sleep! They're not even for me, but for a friend's kid! AAARGH! This is the most asinine waste of time ever!!" (With two exclamation points, even.)

"Hey there. Can I help you with something?" It was a small, meek, but friendly voice. I looked up. Before me, stood a slight girl, maybe about nineteen, in khaki pants and a white turtle neck with a red vest over it. She had large, brown, almond-shaped eyes, and straight, black hair, cut into a short bob. "Are you looking for something?"

"Please..." I looked at her name tag, "Please, Mai, just tell me where I can find the pyjama section. I'm-- I'm trying to find these footie pyjamas that I saw here a couple weeks ago. They have monkeys on them. And bananas."

"Sure," she replied, "They'll be in Apparel. You're in Home and Garden right now. Follow me."

I followed her through the labyrinthine department store to children's apparel. I bid Mai a fond adieu and focused on my pyjama-finding. It was not long before I spotted the rack on which the pyjamas had been hanging when last I saw them. But, alas, it didn't look like there were any left in a size small enough for the child I was shopping for. Like a Toad starved, whose only salvation would be found in children's size sleep wear, I tore through the piles of footie pyjamas, tossing aside gargantuan sets, clearly meant for at least a toddler. Then, there they were. One pair of footie pyjamas with monkeys on them, in the right size. Thrilled, I made it for the check out, the pleasing sensation of a mission accomplished swelling in my belly.

I felt a hand land upon my shoulder as I turned to make my escape. It was a heavy hand, a determined hand, a hand that said either, "Wait, you've forgotten your wallet," or, "And just where do you think you're going with that, my pet, hmmmm?" I was face to face with a large, ruffled bovine. She was trying to pull the pyjamas, MY monkey footie pyjamas, from my grasp. There was a certain madness in her eye. "I had saw them there farst..." She growled. At this point I remembered that not long ago, I was regularly spending three to four hours in the saddle at a time. I recoiled back, and, clutching the pyjamas to my chest, I summoned up every fibre in my calves and quads, and sprang for the nearest check out line.

I am no top class sprinter, but I was faster than this suburban ungulate.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I got home, wrapped and packed the pyjamas, and was ready to take them to the post office, it was already well after six. Not that they would've stood a chance at arriving on time anyway, but still.

And so here I am. I haven't bothered to wrap anything else yet. I am debating whether or not I will. I might just make use of gift bags and tissue paper. That way, if i need to, I can just toss X-present in a bag for X-person... I don't know. The point is that I HAVE a gift for everyone. IF I need them. (Remember, we're supposedly "not doing" Christmas this year.) if I don't, i can return them. And that's my story.

Why, hallo there dearest readership. Been a while. I always figured my blogging would eventually dwindle down to sporadic at best. Ahh, so much to speak of, so much has occurred since last we met, and yet, I choose to relate the following... Perhaps, however, you ought to prepare yourselves for a string, nay, an onslaught, of short, random posts over the course of the weekend.

 

Last night (Thursday, that is, though I am aware it is technically now Saturday), after the dress rehearsal for the concert that was tonight, when the last of us straggling music dorks were swept from the practice rooms around eleven, we went over to Dunkin' Donuts, the traditional second home of the Music Wing.

Because I had been handicapped by a marked lack of sleep for several weeks, I feel that I should not be held accountable for the ridiculousness of the following things that I said while there (and in the first, at the rehearsal).

1) At the end of the first movement of the Moorside Suite by Gustav Holst (I'm on piccolo for that), there is a single, very quiet, very short, rather high Bb. On flute, this wouldn't be an issue, but on picc... eh heh. Everything is up an octave from where it's written, and piccs are just friggin' hard for me to control. Well, no. Be fair. I'd have a much easier time controling the picc I've got if I had a plain ol' silver head joint instead of the black resin head joint I've got now (which is supposed to mimic the top-quality grenadilla wood head joints. I doubt it does...). What makes it tough is that it has no lip plate, so I have a very hard time finding the tone hole and controling the air stream.To get that note, high, clean, and soft, I need to have a whole lot of back pressure (so I have to inhale a LOT). I counted the ten measures rest leading up to the note. I had a plan. Picc to face on measure 8, start inhaling on nine, continue through ten, and get that note right in the last measure. Well, it didn't go as planned, and really, what came out of the picc was almost more of a >>BLATT!<< than a note at all. 'Oh, Sh*t", I thought to myself. Only I didn't just think it. All that air i had just sucked in vented back out again, and I wound up blurting "OH SH*T!" completely unintentionally, and right in what was meant to be dramatic dead silence. Go turrets.

2) At Dunkin' Donuts (DD's) K (percussion) asks where "the lovebirds" are, in reference to L (sax) and M (clarinet), who've yet to arrive. I am not really paying attention to anything, and my response is, "Well, there's D (trumpet)." At first it doesn't seem so bad, until one thinks about it. Beyond simply stating the general whereabouts of another music dork, it really is completely unrelated to the question of where L and M are. Hmm...

3) Lemur-san, this Bud's for you. Do you remember saying that you occasionally blurt out some random musing like "there's no a's in elk" or something to this effect? Well, thinking tangentially along the lines of "Huh. What an incredibly random thing I just said," I eventually found myself blurting out "Hah! There's no a's in 'donut' either," forgetting in my weakened and tired state that a) none of the people I was sitting with have ever read my blog, much less the comment sections, so they'd never seen your comment and b) none of them had been following my train of thought either, so even if they had read your comment, this remark about there being no a's in "donut" would still be totally out-of-nowhere.

And thus, having bared my ridiculous soul to you all once again, adieu for the night.

Just a few more things that assassinate my groove in general, that I need to get off my chest.

Rain. Cycling in the rain is fun. Getting that spray of icy mud-water up your back is fun. Numb fingers and toes and limbs are also fun. The thing is, it's only fun if there's someone to share your misery. Ja'ar and I have had some of our best adventures whilst sharing in some unexpected misery. But if it's just you, in the rain, in the cold, miles from home, then you're just cold, wet, and alone. I'd rather be in snow; it may be colder, but as long as it stays frozen, it leaves your layers in tact; nice and toasty warm. Rain, being that it is still warm enough to be liquid, is able to burrow through your layers. Combine this with Hilde's lack of fenders and my mis-reading the nature of the clouds today, and you have one frozen, irritable Toad.

College Bathrooms. Toilet paper? Soap? Yes? Would it kill the school budget to drain these things once in a while? Nothing says, "We care a lot" like an inch of water stagnating in the loo for two weeks.

Suspensions. On chorale writing exams, we are given things that we need to include in our chorales. One is invariably a suspension (a dissonance between a note and the bass created by holding the note over from the previous chord [so that it becomes a non-harmonic tone] before resolving it. Sorta. You can have a 9-8 SUS, a 7-6 SUS, or a 4-3 SUS.) It should be (and is) easy to include a suspension. All you need is stepwise motion somewhere above the bass, then just hold the descending note over to the next chord. And yet... I go through the check lists as I write the chord progression, before I even start voice-leading. Everything else we're asked for can be handled with the chord progression. Borrowed chords. Neapolitan chords. Modulations. But not a non-harmonic tone. Those are things you add at the very end. So naturally I forget to go back and shove a SUS in there. As if I don't lose enough points on other things. Gah.

Aural Skills. I have no ears. A class that is all about hearing the subtlest differences in pitch, then writing them down for a grade could not be more painful for me were it designed and directed by the most diabolical of masterminds.

Hilde's Front Derailleur Adjustment Screws. Grrr.... A quarter turn this way, a quarter turn that way. Turn the cranks, shift through the gears. Alles in ordnung. Turn the cranks while shifting again, for good measure, and whups! It won't go onto the big ring anymore. That's nice. Start over. A quarter turn this way, a quarter turn that way....

The Twit on the Cell at the Library. On Thursday, I needed to concentrate. It was a dire situation. The paper I had forgot about, that covered two chapters, was due in only an hour. Fiendishly, I read, typed, and read some more. I knew I could make it, yes, I might be saved yet if I can just-- When the ringing came. Ringing that had its fearful origins in the depths of hell, I tell you. Maddening, incessant, high-pitched, and... Rastafarian? It rang forth from the adjacent computer cubicle for an eternity, and when the twit-owner of said phone finally answered, did she hurriedly hang-up, embarrassed and full of remorse for having brought my paper to a halt? No, she most certainly did not, ma'am. She proceeded to have the most loud, obnoxious convo regarding her man, her friends, and their combined doings. Twit, to you, Death, and nothing more.

Sorry it's been a while, dudes. There's been quite a bit going on. Several times, I have meant to take a moment to update, but the time simply wasn't there. Every chance I'd get to sit and blog a bit, there'd be something going down. So the up-'til-this-point steady groove of Blog has been upset a bit. My bad. But I have many excuses, here.

Last Saturday, I was supposed to be going to a party with some of the other music kids. When She Who Was to Give Me a Lift didn't call by mid-afternoon, I figured that I'd been forsaken, and would just go for a ride instead, then make an entry when I got home. While on my way to Cohoes (where I turn around, about nineteen miles from here), I happened upon a small yellow tent, and the woman inside flagged me down. Not sure what to make of this-- A trick? A trap? One of those traveling Voo-Doo ladies who'll give some horrible prediction of my future that my ensuing efforts to prevent from becoming realized will actually only bring to pass?-- I stopped and waited for her to get off her cell phone, thinking of the lost blogging minutes with a twinge of resentment.

She explained to me that this was the Mohawk-Hudson Mystery Ride, and that I was a prime candidate to participate in it, if I was at all interested in solving the mystery. Now, as any of you who are both Sherlock Holmes buffs and read my profile know, something that had both mystery and an opportunity to win stuff is something I couldn't pass up. The Voo-Doo Lady/ registrar gave me a slip of paper that had nine squares on one side and a small map on the other. The idea was to stop at each of nine stops marked with a ribbon (four going each way, with one on the end, spread about a mile apart) answer a question about the Mohawk-Hudson area, and get a stamp or sticker in one of the squares. My first question was about some buildings visible from the path. What did they used to be? Ummm... Did they have to do with water treatment? Bingo! One stamp. I failed to see the mystery element in this, but figured that if participating in this whatever it was, would only add maybe nine miles to the ride I was planning, it was worth seeing through.

I'll be the first to tell you, that I have no ability to judge distance. Even though I know the map of this trail well, and knew that each stop looked about a mile apart, I passed the first and second stops without even noticing them. Well, I noticed the first stop, but asked the woman posted at it if she needed help (because she was sitting on the ground with a bike in front of her, and I didn't see the ribbon). When I realized my mistake, I returned to the first stop, where I felt very silly indeed, and even more so when I suddenly found myself trying to answer what ought to have been an easy question about why the bike path was important. At each remaining stop, I was equally befuddled by the questions the volunteers were asking. In my defense, most of the questions had many answers, and besides, who's expecting a pop quiz times nine right smack-dab in the middle of a ride? When I returned to the beginning after a little over three-quarters of an hour, the Voo-Doo Lady gave me a Coke and a Crayola crayon yellow "MAY is BIKE MONTH in NEW YORK" t-shirt. I've since decided that this, the shirt, was the mystery part of the ride, as everything else was pretty straight forward. I drank the Coke, and, my judgment clouded by the sudden rush of energy that came in that red aluminum can, I finished my regularly scheduled ride, plus an extra sixteen miles to and from my college (38+9+16=63 or there abouts. At least I know that I should be able to make The Camp and back).

I got home around six, and meant to post, when I remembered that I had three tests coming up. On Monday, there'd be a theory test in roman numeral analysis, and a Conducting test dealing with various foreign terms and definitions. On Wednesday, a Chorale writing-a-thon. Plus, the dreaded Woodwind Sectional was Tuesday (A Wind Ensemble rehearsal where only the woodwinds, of which I am one, are rehearsed. These can either be very nice or horrid, and it is best to squeeze out an extra hour or five of practice). And I had to play my latest etude Wednesday (gah... thus went a few more hours out of the weekend), and had (eh heh, have) another Environmental Science paper due Thursday. So. The blog could wait at least until Saturday night, I reasoned, after it was too late to practice more without agitating the Neighbors, and after I'd gotten some study time in.

Ten-thirty rolled around, and I closed the books, changed into the blog-writing PJ's, and sat down in the traditional Blogging chair, in which I sit right now. When the phone rang. I answered, it was She Who Was to Give Me a Lift, and if I still wanted to go to this party, she'd be by in about an hour. ...enghk... I spare you all the details, but I will say this-- That I was mocked, and am still being mocked, for bringing a book to read to a party (but I also brought a twelve pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, so maybe I am redeemed a bit? I was tired... I needed a read to stay awake, that's all...) and that we got home about three-thirty. I had gotten up at five-thirty Saturday morning, then I rode over sixty miles, and went to an all-night party-thing until the very wee hours of the next day. Quite beat, I spent Sunday sleeping and studying, and, much to my chagrin, not being more productive by, say, sitting here blogging. And the rest of the week thus far has been a blur of testing and high-intensity/stress performances. I am stunned that it is already Thursday again. Well, I guess I am just sort of stunned... period.

 

All right. I just got back from the movies (four of us music geeks went to see Corpse Bride. That we are truly geeks was evidenced when we all groaned during a scene towards the beginning where the protagonist, Victor, outlines some kind of weird diminished-something-chord on a piano-- it looked like b, d, f, g#, a, then maybe c-- yet manages to sound an appeggiated major chord. You know, do mi so do mi so do) and I need to shower and go to bed.

 

In other news: Only two weeks from tomorrow and we have the first concert of the season/semester. I just gotta get that lick in the Gaelic Rondo. Just gotta do it. That means more reps... more reps and more and more forever. Gah.

 

PS: If I was just inexcusably rambling or non-sensical, please excuse me anyway. I'm in a fragile place at the moment, somewhere just a hair's breadth from hallucinations and not much further from implosion.

How to Wither:

1) Write down all wrong dates for any upcoming midterms, making the pacing of studying weird. Also be too addle-brained to think to ask professors for the dates when you see them.

2) Squander time that ought to be going to studying watching National Geographic or doing some other, useless activity.

3) By the time the exam dates are cleared up, make sure you have enough homework from other classes to keep you from study even longer. Reassure yourself, saying that you can catch-up over the weekend and the Tuesday afternoon before the tests (which are on Thursday).

4) Go to a jazz concert, then out to a donut shop with friends on Tuesday, take at least five hours doing this, then stay up past four doing homework, very slowly. Tell yourself that you will make up the study-time and sleep Wednesday night.

5) Implode on Wednesday night, study at ten percent efficiency 'til the wee hours. Then, just when laying down to sleep, remember that friggin' essay. Score. Fire up Mr Coffee.

6) Take two midterms while getting periodic tremors. Observe how the lines in the blue book dance-- merry! Happy little dancing blue book lines! Laugh out loud in class, draw a negative response from the Prof. Write a whole essay, then completely forget what it was about immediately after walking out of the classroom.

7) You're at home again, but have no recollection of how you came to be there.

8) Try to go for a ride...hah...borf at the top of the big hill without warning and for no apparent reason. Find that you are nodding off at the stop lights. Turn around after only five miles, go home. Borf at the top of the big hill, again without warning or apparent reason. Gently pedal home. Lay down on front lawn for an hour, making Neigbors rather uncomfortable.

9) Try to blog about a ride you are planning for Saturday that will go up into the Adirondacks, to your family camp on Sacandaga. Instead watch in awe as your spinal cord melts. Your hands start to tremble, it grows dfficult to swallow, your eyes begin to blur and won't focus on the screen, and the chills set in. Sit in a stupor in front of the screen for an hour. Try to drool a little.

10) Now, back muscles twitching at random, speech slurred, and completely unable to string a single thought together, decide to leave the post about the ride idea for another day, crawl away from the computer and into bed. Wither.

Dear Mr Johnson, if that's your real name, which doesn't sound likely as you have a decidedly East Indian accent,

You know, I am very sorry to have refused your offer of five-hundred dollars in gift certificates to any store of my choosing. Actually, that extra five hundred dollars would've been all I still needed to get the Specialized Allez I've been looking at for months now, and even to put clipless pedals on it! Well, it's just that there are a few very disconcerting things about your pitch... But I can help you with them, because, as we all know, I am an expert in telemarketing (hahaha, actually I'm not, but I should think these items self-evident, even to a baboon).

1) If a prospective mark-- er-- customer asks you what company you represent, because it registers as "BLOCKED" on Caller ID, do not say, "I am with your bank," unless you will be able to answer the subsequent question, "And which is my bank, please?"

2) It makes no sense to a patsy-- patron-- if you say that it is going to cost 15.95 USD to ship a gift certificate, as, if they live in the US, they know this should only come to about 37 cents. Besides that, why not just make the certificate for 484 USD and leave the shipping fee out of it?

3) It makes even less sense if you are only willing to accept payment for this shipping via a personal check in the mail. No creditcard, no cashier's check, no money order, not even a debit card. And it is suspicious if you say that this is because my bankers want verification that I have a checking account with them. I would argue that my bankers already are aware of my checking account with them, as they were there when I opened it.

4) I can almost guarantee that when you add that you will need the person's checking account number to verify that the check is theirs when you receive it, you are going to freak him or her way out.

5) And finally, it may just be me, but you did not inspire any great confidence in your company when you concluded your spiel with, "And this is by sure no scamming. By Sure. So you send check and we give you gift card as soon as we get check. Okay?"

 

Far be it from me to criticize your methods, but I can't help it. Your company's is the dumbest marketing ploy I have ever heard of, and, though, granted, it is almost certainly a scam, I cannot help but pity you for having to call people and lay something so utterly stupid on them day after day. You poor, misguided individual.

 

 

Yours in Earnest,

A. Toad

I haven't really mentioned anything about how my driving lessons have been coming along since the second entry I made in this blog, and now the road test is tomorrow at ten. This might be because I don't want to jinx myself; I could be highly superstitious, and don't want to talk about driving because I will either talk myself up as some great driver, only to run over a mailbox during the test, or seal my own fate with marked pessimism. It may be because I know that me prattling on about driving lessons would be even more dull than whatever I usually prattle on about, and I don't want to alienate anymore of the vast readership than necessary (hahaha, the vast readership...). I even might be trying to cover up a failed road test, taken under cover of darkness, when none of you were looking. It was such an embarrassing defeat, I couldn't bear speaking of it, and hoped the whole thing could just be swept under the rug. However, the real reason for the radio silence is that I was, and am, repelled by my driving instructor, and didn't want to feel guilty about assassinating his character in a world wide public forum. Then, over the course of one one-hour lesson, he called me squirt, babe, hon, girlie, and, the most wildly inappropriate of all: swee'heart. I will personally slash the tires of the next person to call me "swee'heart." The gloves.... oh, they're off. It gives me hives, massive, itching, burning hives, when foolish, not-at-all nice people call me swee'heart.

In a nutshell...

I started taking driving lessons because I couldn't get any help from my relatives. As it turns out, this was a good idea, because my relatives' information wasn't so great. I went driving a few times with my grandfather, who is blind in one eye, and has cataracts in the other, essentially bringing his depth perception to nought. Hmmm.... Maybe he should stop driving soon.... He kept trying to make me drive in the shoulder, and on the wrong side of the road. Every time I'd go driving with him ended in vigorous debate over just how close the car I was parallel parking on really was to the car I was driving. These debates would carry on only long enough for my fingernails to start leaving marks in the wheel, after which point I'd be "turning this car around because this is a waste of my time, and you have no clue what you're on about."

After sitting on a permit for a year, I had to take matters into my own hands, and shell out for a driving lesson package through a local driving school. Three lessons, the five-hour pre-licensing course, one half-hour prep lesson before the road test, and use of their car during the test: 190 USD. Not too awful, I guess. Until I met my instructor.

Whitey. Whitey (whose name I just came back to change out of guilt --ed.) is a red-faced, doughy, male chauvinist, of a salty disposition (not in a good or endearing way, either). He likes to tell blonde jokes, vulgar ones, to his young, blonde students while they are driving; something about pigtails and a swimming pool. This distracts them, which, in turn, drives me, situated in the back seat, to distraction, for I want only to arrive home in one piece after my lesson. He likes to joke with yours truly about an incident in which I accidentally grabbed his knee when looking for the shifter lever-stick-thing that wasn't there, because in the lame driving school car it juts out of the steering column. Whitey says, "Don't worry, that's bonus points on the road test, ayuck." Filthy, offensive, unclean cretin. And you reek of aged gouda.

Ahh, but the worst of it? Because he knows more than the average boor about driving, Whitey fancies himself quite the sage in all areas. I've gotten more than an earful of his lectures, and now I need to set the records strait on a few things. Knowing one Gaelic word, Whitey has determined that the most serious language students would obviously rather learn Gaelic, than say, a more useful, widely spoken language like German. He goes so far as to say German and Spanish are nothing by comparison. I suppose.... Unless you count the number of people who speak Spanish and German, and compare this number with that of Gaelic speakers. When I bring this point up, he replies, "Well, hon, it's a hard la'guige, Guhlick. Werst than German or Spanish. Cuz those're Roman, see, in or'gin. All that acrosst Eur'p are. Even all the Spanish and Finns and them. If you ain't got it to do it, you can't do it." Then my brain hurt, and I nearly killed a cat. WHAT? Okay... First things first. I'll grant you, Spanish is one of the romance languages. Yes. These are the languages born of Latin; Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and French are all romance languages. German, for gawd sake, is GERMANIC. GAAAH! Germanic languages include... GERMAN, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, and Danish. The Finns speak FINNISH, a language of Finno-Ugric origin, and, as yet, it is unclear where that comes from, as it is quite unlike anything else. Germanic and Romance languages both stemmed from Indo-European, but Finno-Ugric is right outta left field. I have heard that it may have roots in central Asia, for what that's worth.

Besides being an expert in languages, Whitey, at some point in his illustrious career, sang in a high school chorus. He now wants to educate me in music, where my professors seem to be failing so miserably. I sometimes question his qualifications in teaching me music theory though, as he seems to be lacking some very fundamental principals of music. Like his misconceptions of language, I can clear some of these up for him right now, in case he ever reads this, but I am not going into detail. Enharmonic does not mean the same thing as harmonic. Solfegge is that "do-re-mi-fa-so stuff," and no, I cannot sing you "do" unless you give me a key and a tonic pitch. Where do you think we are, Europe? I Have no clue if the note you just sang was an F or not, but I give it an F. B-Flat has more flats than B. Aural, not Oral, has to do with hearing. There are not only seven scal-- No, I change my mind, it's hopeless.

In the interest of fairness, I can parallel park much better than before I took lessons. Very good.

I had better pass this thing tomorrow, if for no other reason, then because I don't want to deal with this character any more.

UPDATE: Passed! I am now among the licensed drivers. Watch yourselves, for the bike lane is more sacred to me than the double yellow line.

Argh. Does it not matter what time in the AM I roll myself from the warm and fuzzy of the somnambular, for there will always be one octogenarian or other in the bathroom, for forty-five minutes or more, not apparently doing anything in there? This is most incredible. See, I share a wall with the lou, a thin wall, which gives rise to as many moments of 'O'Gawd, I could've lived my life, and not born witness to the things I have just heard' as it does to frustration when I am anxiously awaiting to kick rocks in the morning so I can get into school early, and steal a bit of practice time, and the only thing in my way is the occupied lavoratory. It is frightfully inconvenient to wake up just in time to hear the door shut and lock everyday. I seem to have a gift for timing. Just thought you'd all like to know. On the up-side of things, today's extra forty-five minutes have given me opportunity to post before the sun is out all the way.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go make creative use of the trees out back.

Good Idea: Starting blog to document your college life and other various misadventures, thereby providing a creative outlet for yourself, as well as entertainment, free of charge, to the general public.

Bad Idea: Having spotted your Theory professor in the library while you were working on an entry-- "Hey Mr. C, come look at this picture of me right after I biffed it." "Ouch. Hey, e-mail me your blog's address, I'll go check it out." "Uh...ok. Please don't flunk me on general principle."

Good Idea: Practicing lots of piccolo because you've been assigned something to the tune of eighty bajillion piccolo parts.

Bad Idea: Playing the highest note you can get on picc, as long as you can, to rile the neighbor-dog, to spite the neighbors. Just because those creeps always hated you for no reason doesn't make it a very nice thing to do. Of course, it IS a very satisfying thing to do, but that is not the issue.

Good Idea: Taking the long way home because it's a beautiful day and who knows how many of those are left this year.

Bad Idea: Taking the long way home during rush hour, because you couldn't get over to the left in time to make your turn; having slept only three hours in the last two nights (not for any particular reason), you didn't want to rely on your own judgement.

Good Idea: Possessing strong political opinions, but choosing to keep them out of the Music Dept locker room, because you are a liberal, non-confrontational wimp-toad, with better things to do than argue.

Bad Idea: Changing your mind about the above good idea, because being a non-confrontational wimp-toad makes your ego hurt, which results in getting into a very stupid half-assed argument with a vocal major that begins with the BBC vs. FOX News, and ends with a discussion of Cartoon Network's late-night show, Toonami.

Even worse idea: Now feeling desperately uncomfortable, because, indeed, you ARE a non-confrontational wimp-toad, you spring on the very next topic up, which happens to be Spongebob Squarepants' sexual orientation. Trying to segue, you act like you're up-to-date with Cartoon Network's Toonami, and know what it still is, when all you have to rely on is a month-long addiction to Cartoon Cartoon Fridays three years ago. Amazingly, it hasn't changed much, but, to your chagrin, Spongebob is not on Cartoon Network, rather Nickelodeon. Now, you are an un-hip, non-confrontational wimp-toad. Very good.

Well kiddies, it's allllllll over. Today is the very last day of Summer Break '05. What have we learned this summer? (Scratching the summer semester, that is, for any of you dedicated students out there.) We've learned how to waste time, in phenomenal fashion! And we here at Toad Pizza want to share this knowledge with you. To make your time wasting easier to grasp, as well as more inefficient, we have arranged a short list of things you, yes, you can do to waste time.

Time-Wasting Activities You Can Do

1) You can start a blog. Everybody wants to hear what you have to say, so say it! The brilliant thing about this is that, although you won't be wasting any single day blogging, it will take a little time out of everyday-- Forever! And where else can you share in the exhilaration of your very first "hey ur s0 c00l. w@nt 2 C my piture?" comments?

2) Buy assorted seed beads by the kilogram, sort them, one bead at a time, then string them out into hanks (bunches of strands). This will take a ridiculous amount of time, and is absolutly pointless! You can justify this activity to yourself at night, when fretting over the stacks of dishes in the sink, and the rotting mound of garbage under it, by saying that "every one does something to unwind, right?"

3) Knit a scarf out of a dead yak. No dead yak? Even better! Use novelty yarn that LOOKS like dead yak when knit. Novelty yarn is almost impossible to work with; it sticks on your needles, disintigrates as you knit, and causes your stitches to be uneven and bumpy. Super! If you began your scarf in spring '04, then you should be just about done in time for winter this year. Unfortunately, by then you will have discovered that, no, maybe you didn't want a dead yak hat and scarf combo afterall, and besides, whenever you try to bundle yourself with your new scarf, you get little fuzzies in your nose.

4) Try to find that one exact line that you love from any book you've read so you can use it as your quote at the bottom of your e-mail. Go ahead, try it. You probably won't even find the book you want. And even if you find the book, not only do you stand no chance of ever seeing the line again (especially so if it was in an anthology), but you will also feel guilty and silly for having expended such a huge amount of energy on your e-mail's personal signature.

5) Own the minesweeper highscore boards on all the computers at your college library. Actually, this shouldn't be listed here, because it is not a waste of time. Minesweeper is an amazing game, and takes great powers of deduction and dexterity. Minesweeper should be a mandatory part of our primary educations, and the stars on the flag should be replaced with a Minsweeper board. All hail Minesweeper. Moving on...

6) Read an issue of the New York Post. Caution: You may want to leave yourself a "cushion" of roughly twenty-four hours following reading the New York Post, as side-effects may include feelings of light-headedness, dizzy spells, rashes, nausea, vomiting, headaches, temorary blindness, stomach and/or liver problems, as well as possible death, in the event that the pain of your brain melting into a brackish goo is too great for you, and you decide to take "the easy way out." You may find it a safer, better idea, allbeit marginally more productive, to rub your face with a cheesegrater for a few hours, or, and this is a personal favorite of the editor here at Toad Pizza, you can simply put a bucket over your head and go stand in the garden, while singing The Waltzing Matilda.

7) Spend the day watching the FOX News Channel. Caution: Toad Pizza cannot be held responsible for any death or injury resulting from time spent watching FOX News. We do not recommend this if you are pregnant or nursing, are exhibiting any symptoms of heart attack or failure, or are between the ages of two and ninety-eight and one half.

Well! We sure do hope that this will be of absolutely no use to you! Of course, these are just a few things you can do to waste time. There are the "oldies-but-goodies" out there too; watching linoleum peel, observing the qualities of paint as it dries, talking to walls, and so on. See if you can come up with your very own time-wasting activities! Get the kids involved! We hope that you will have as much fun as we did as you start down the road to total and complete uselessness.

I would just like to make one thing clear, assuming that I have not already. I am an idiot. Not in the nice, Prince Myshkin, I-just-want-to-save-you way, either. I do dumb things all the time. I don't know why, as generally even though I know that they are dumb before hand, I do them anyway.

Today, for example. I am still sick, yet I decide that it will be a good idea to ride big loop through the county on errands. First, to the Barnes and Noble, a few miles down the road, where I bought a couple books and a magazine. From there another few miles to a scheisty music store to trade an old Gemeinhardt, one that my studio instructor fondly referred to as the "Dog Flute," for a piccolo. (That flute itself was a dumb thing to do; I bought it from the aforementioned pinchy store. It was a huge rip-off at nearly fourteen hundred, and after only a year, the keys didn't function properly, the banana key, an inline, only worked sometimes, and the flute itself was giving me carpal tunnel. What a junker. I ended up upgrading to a Lyric through a different dealer, BTW, and I couldn't be happier with it.)

At the store, I let the manager keep me waiting nearly TWO HOURS while he waited on other customers, because I felt bad for having offended him when I said that I went to a different dealer for my upgrade. That is dumb. I traded the flute plus a further bill-fifty for a Jupiter JPC-305 piccolo. Don't laugh, Jupiter is the parent company of DiMedici, after all, so they can't be too bad. Besides, the flute was only worth about $500, and the Jupiter was the best picc there. The other two were over-priced Gemeinhardts. Blegh!

I left and rode another mile or two to my college, where I planned to buy my textbooks. Dumb. Oh how dumb? Words cannot express. Why it didn't occur to me that a) textbooks are heavy, b) textbooks are heavy AND I might not be able to use any of my textbooks from last semester, meaning I'd have to buy all new ones, weighing upwards of forty pounds, or c) textbooks are heavy AND the last four miles back to my house are uphill AND I am on a bicycle with a fever, the world may never know.

 

 

Photos: The new picc as well as the incredible stack of textbooks I fit into my pack.

This morning I woke up thinking that by the end pf the day, I would have an excellent source of inspiration for an entry. Afterall, today I spent five hours sitting in a driving school classroom (a five-hour pre-licensing class is mandatory in NY.) I mean, I figured it'd be five hours of tired-out educational VHS tapes from the '80s. You know; bad hair, loud sweaters, synthesized music, and a cartoon mascot like Buddy the Singing Breathalyzer or Harold Hydroplane.

 

Nada. Unfortunately, the class itself was too bland to have any distinguishing characteristics at all. I can't even truthfully say that it was mind-numbingly dull because there were a couple semi-interesting moments. Like learning that each one of those dotted lines on the highway is actually fifteen feet long, and that they're spaced twenty-five feet apart. I put my money on five feet, one guy guessed ten, but most of the class was going lower, around a foot or two. Who knew? Other than this pearl however, it was a non-event. Those five hours have been lost forever to a black hole of blank normalcy. I feel nothing, one way or the other, about that class or the people who were in it. Although, I guess I am glad to have had it reinforced, that, when on a bicycle, I really am supposed to ride in the shoulder to the right of the road, and not, as one honking passerby astutely suggested, "OOOHHHHARGHYA CARS RAAGHAGHAGGHA DAMN BIKES YEAAARGH STREET HOOOOOOAH." Dunno. That's all I have to say about it.

 

So, instead of that, I think I'll talk about my undying love of Grape Nuts.

 

This is something I was just discussing the other day with my associate in Germany, Jayar. As it turns out, we both love Grape Nuts. But I don't know that his love of Grape Nuts is as thought out as mine. I don't know if he really knows WHY he loves Grape Nuts, or if he just accepts it as an undeniable truth.

I love Grape Nuts because for one, they're super crunchy, and, like shiny things and things that make little squeaky noises, I like crunchy things.

For two, they're tasty, but not in an overtly tasty way. It's like, I dunno, your tongue doesn't really know if it digs on these little crunchy chunks of barley and wheat; they're not sweet, they're not salty, nor are they sour or bitter or tangy but they definitely taste like something, something good. (Come to think of it, what DO they taste like? I mean besides barley and wheat.)

For three, they're tricky. Their outward appearance is almost like that of granola, but they really don't taste like granola, and they're harder than granola. Camouflage, see? Tricky.

And finally, I love Grape Nuts because I have never seen them sold in one of those mondo-size ten pound bags that cereal comes in these days. I know that they're probably out there; hordes of lifetime-supply bags of Grape Nuts, lurking around in a dark corner of some CostCo somewhere, but I've never seen one, and for that, I love them all the more. (I don't like those big bags of cereal. They'd be fine if people really made them last weeks or at least a few days, but we all know they won't live through the weekend.)

And now I'm tired. The End.

Okay, SAT, it's ON. That's right SAT, I'm callin' you out! This rant has been a long time comin'. Been slowly building up within the depths of my soul, ever since l had the misfortune to meet you a few months ago. BUT YOUR TIME IS NIGH! TWAH! Yes, it's true that I didn't take you when I was supposed to, in high school. But I have a good excuse: I was hiding, and didn't go to high school. Not that I can say I am particularly sad about not taking you then-- there's certainly no love lost there, you stinkin', yellow-bellied...-- but, after I took you last June, I can see where it might have been beneficial to have had access to all those high school How-to-Score-Big-on-the-SATs classes that I have heard about.

Sigh... I admit, SAT, that my only SAT-specific preparation was a trip to Barnes and Noble to buy a $10 SAT prep book. I thought that I could get around having to soak wads of cash into the $80 and $100 models or the expensive crap at the College Board website. I see now that this was a mistake. When I got home, I found that you had deliberately made my SAT book lame, filling it with bizarre typos and misprints, and what's worse, you had them in all the math sections. Touché, SAT, touché. (Really, SAT, have you no decency? At long last, have you no decency? In the math, even? How could you do it, SAT, how?? All I'm saying is that there's a big difference between Px3Y/40=Z/40 and Px3Y/40=40Z.)

Oh, SAT, how you stink of scam. For shame! Kids have to devote sometimes an entire year and hundreds of dollars to prepare for you. I had the two weeks between the end of the spring semester and when I would be taking you, and a $10 bargain basement prep book whose math sections were later revealed to be copies of ancient incantations used to summon the evil gnomes of Caerbannog. How can I compete with that? How can a Toad with evil gnomes compete? Must I buy your special books, and sign up for your special classes just to get an OK score?! And aren't you supposed to be judging COLLEGE aptitude? I'm already IN college. That's the reason I couldn't study for you, SAT. The only reason I took you at all is because universities demand that I have your precious SAT scores! ARGH!

Let me just say, SAT, that you are a base creature, indeed. Sly, clever, yes, but base and vile as the worms in the ground! You test only how well students can spend money preparing for you and how well they can take you, but they have to take you, and have to do well on you. Even if they're already very busy college students, even if they've got mountains of transcripts, YOU, in all your fantastic irrelevance are what the admissions people are interested in! Curse you, SAT! Curse your expensive SAT books, your-- your hoighty-toighty SAT classes, and a pox on the house of SAT! YEEEAAAARRRGH!!!

 

........hiccup....

 

I guess what I am trying to say is that last June, a bunch of high schoolers left me gasping for air in their academic dust, just barely clinging to the average bunch with a 1970. Out of 2400. And it's because they had special, magical SAT prep courses and books. Magic. Not because I was grossly under-prepared to take the exam, and they weren't, or because their education was more well-rounded than mine. And this makes me bitter.