I despise Net-Speak. Let’s just get that out of the way right now. I loathe it so deeply that I feel that Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer, and Linus Torvalds should all get together and create a cross-platform addition to the newest versions of their respective operating systems by which any instance of the three keystrokes L – O – L, preceded and followed by a space, should cause a shaped charge planted inside the case of the computer to immediately ignite, blitzing the motherboard and taking the offender off-line before more damage can be done.
On the other hand, for some inexplicable reason, I’ve titled this entry using a bit of Net Speak that was popular in the early 2000s. I’m not aware that anybody uses this archaism anymore, so the best I can say about it is that, fundamentally, at least it’s not “lol.” In fact, its meaning is ambiguous, with the “H” meaning either “happening” or “here.” And so we bring ourselves to the point, which is that, so far today, there’s NMH.
I once referred to Net Speak as an “open source enigma code,” and I still marvel at the moment of brilliance that forged that description. Verily, Net Speak is just this—a form of language encryption that is freely available to everyone, and yet benefits almost exclusively from its obscurity among those it is trying to evade. Amusingly, the attempts of those “out of the loop” (the previous generation) to garner understanding of this language exude a level of futility matched only perhaps by marching one’s head into a brick wall. These attempts are clumsy, slow, and always just behind the mark—it’s a lot like watching a Ragdoll cat try to catch a mouse. They’re pitiful at it.
I never really subscribed to the whole obfuscation trend. For one thing, I have little to hide. For another, being highly literate (and proficient in touch typing), I tend to think in complete sentences and to employ near-perfect grammar (within reasonable standards thereof) in whatever I write. For me, I would have to actively translate from proper English to Net Speak, and on some level my brain just lacks the overhead, like a processor that has too many tasks running at once. This is not perhaps a deficiency on my part so much as a consequence of my rather deep understanding and internalization of the basic principles of the English language. Or perhaps I’m a square. At this point, I really don’t care.
Don’t get me wrong—I don’t consider myself somehow better than those who use Net Speak. Fundamentally, I don’t feel that they resort to Net Speak because they lack command of proper English. Indeed, their ability to switch between the two is quite remarkable, and to that end warrants careful psychological study. In fact, a whole new field of psychology—Internet psychology—will likely erupt in the coming decade, though it lacks a concrete definition or even a consensus name. I call it “Internet psychology,” but others might use a different moniker. Sadly, generic and descriptive names tend to lose in the marketplace to more exotic but less descriptive choices (e.g. HD DVD versus Blu-Ray), so who the hell knows what mockery will eventually emerge as the designation of this branch of study.
Not simply another tired Genesis reference (“The Fountain Of Salmacis” from Nursery Cryme), this about describes what I spent over an hour-and-a-half attempting to accomplish with two identical pairs of headphones. Basically, the design is rather flawed in that the plastic shells of these cans have a tendency to crack after about a year. My first pair became utterly unusable, hence the presence of a second. This second pair, I’m sad to say, has demonstrated the same problem, though I somewhat helped things along by dropping the pair several times. In fact, for the past few months the joint that connects the left ear cup to the headband has been open, its spring mechanism completely vacated. This resulted in a slack fit and possible further damage.
So I had to do something. Having the original pair that had broken in a different place, I realized I could theoretically transplant parts from it onto the newer pair and fix the problem. Little did I know that this would be an entry straight into Hell.
Suffice to say that this operation was the most frustrating hour-and-a-half of my entire life. There were several points where I thought I would never get the things back together again, and I had to do the whole thing about three times before everything fit properly. Even now, it’s not perfect. Apparently, Sony decided to change the design ever so slightly between the two production runs, resulting in a left cup that doesn’t quite hang the same way as the right one—as a consequence, the headband ends up crooked on my head. Also, the new screws are too long somehow for the old coupling, meaning that one of them sticks out a ways. I have no idea how this can be, but I’m not taking it all apart again to find out.
The restored fit is quite a revelation, and the resultant improvement in sound quality (in mid- and high ranges, strangely) is quite noticeable. Sadly, my ears had gotten so used to an off-center stereo image that they had compensated, so now everything sounds as though it’s biased toward the left. That’s right; I’ve got a pair of liberal headphones. If they start warbling suddenly about change, I’m going to finally decide they’re beyond repair and chuck them in the bin once and for all.
In other news, I’m writing a requiem. Not an entire requiem at the moment, just the last part, “In Paradisum.” The problem is, I’m not sure if the melody I’ve selected is entirely original. I may or may not have heard part of it elsewhere, but it’s almost impossible to tell without having any idea where to check. The best I can do is forge ahead, make a test recording (with my own voice, which is rather questionable in the higher registers), play it past a few music aficionados, and see if any of them recognize anything blatantly plagiarized. If I had to guess where I picked it up, I’d say Mozart. I’ll have to check his own Requiem to see (or hear, as it were). Regardless, what was so surprising to me was how well the text fits. I still haven’t gotten to the bit about Lazarus yet, but that will come with time.
The question next is how to arrange the work, harmonize it, and what voice registers I should use. I’m leaning toward the traditional SATB, but I might split it even further if I need more polyphony for some odd reason. The way I hear it in my head, though, it’s more toward the homophonic end of the spectrum, with harmonized voices moving in unison to form chord progressions. But, knowing my own particular style, it’s full of suspensions—I just absolutely love suspensions, to the point of excess and overuse.
Unfortunately, even if my idea is totally original and I figure out the whole arrangement, it’s somewhat dismaying going into something like this knowing nothing I write will ever live up to the premier example of the art form. In this case, of course there can be no other than Gabriel Faure’s “In Paradisum,” certainly one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and the benchmark against which all Requiems should be measured. As I mentioned in a previous post, Faure’s setting of this portion of the Requiem is the piece I want played on the occasion of my own death, whenever that may be.
A bunch of rambling, certainly, but it’s rather late (or early) and my mind is clearly not working right. I’ll leave it here.
There is little of real import to this update, except that I’m using it to test out a bunch of new plugins I’ve installed, including one which allows me to paginate my entries. Of course this is probably the worst place for such a plugin (journal-esque blogs are probably outstaying their welcome if they need pages), but I figured I’d test it out here.
You may notice a nifty little bar beneath entries now offering several choices for promoting the current post to social networking sites. I can’t imagine saying much here that would be worthy of a Digg, but, as I said, I’m just testing the waters here. In time I will attempt to homogenize the features of all my blogs, but for now this will be the “chopping block” location. Without further ado, turn the page!
I tried yesterday to describe the events of January 15th, though the resultant entry (which I’ve made private) became something of a rant. Accordingly, though it contained nothing I couldn’t back up with fact if I really needed to, the possibility of a link back bringing about such a situation just isn’t anything I need to deal with right now (or ever). So we’ll try again, this time with fewer specifics (a name-and-shame could cause me grief).
On Thursday I awoke at around 4:00 PM and decided it was time to clean up my dorm room, as per Wayne State’s demands. At the time, the most troublesome thing going through my head was how to work this event into a Nintendo-esque title. I finally settled on “Isle Delfino is officially clean!” The deed wasn’t without its complications. I had exactly one trash bag, which once completely full would not fit down the trash chute, anyway. Regardless, I needed to get the litter out of the way so I could organize the remainder of the stuff in the room. And that doesn’t even include the 3,082 pop cans that had collected over the course of a semester, which all needed their own separate bag.
Sadly, a search of all the local campus establishments revealed that nowhere could one purchase anything even remotely resembling my quarry. I mean, you can buy bloody condoms, but apparently nothing to pitch them into once you’ve used them (thanks for pointing out that bit of logic to me, Jamie).
Defeated, I trekked all the way back to my dorm room, only to discover that my next class (in about 15 minutes) was pretty much all the way back from where I had just come, in Old Main. Ten minutes later I arrived and proceeded to entertain myself with drawing calligraphy until the professor finally staggered in (about seven minutes late).
This is where I must exercise restraint. I had heard horror stories about inept or otherwise ideologically-biased instructors. I had even had the distinct misfortune of sitting one such professor for a philosophy course I took in my freshman year. However, nothing was to have prepared me for the man who stood before me for the next half hour of my life. I could immediately tell that he was arrogant—it’s a bit like a cold breeze that emanates from his frame. Nothing entirely corporeal, but definitely a presence that this man felt he was the most important object in the room.
Unfortunately, his arrogance was the least of my concerns, though it contributes in no small part, I believe, to the pure mockery he has made of a staple of the English major, American Literature. His syllabus began with a quote by a German Marxist whose belief was essentially that history should not be viewed in context, but instead picked from and assembled piecemeal in order to form a lens through which modern-day people may view their actions. Essentially, he is an apologist for a disturbing trend of the last forty years, which is the systematic rewriting of history to reflect and justify contemporary political ideals. The professor took this quote as his mission statement, except that even he didn’t seem to really understand what he was saying. He stuttered a great deal and beat around the bush whilst hacking through an explanation. Bored with his seeming lack of command of the English language, I took the time to paw through the remainder of the syllabus.
What I saw both chilled me to the bone and angered me to a slow boil. The list was void of virtually any classic American authors! In the place of anything even resembling relevance, we instead had everything from Allen Ginsberg (noted communist claptrap from the protest years in the United States) to a tremendous share of civil rights authors (who can hardly be considered appropriate to either the subject or the time period in question), to various Marxists, socialists, and communists; to Bob Dylan. Scattered here and there, almost as an afterthought, were Emerson, Hemingway, and Dickinson (one work apiece). Absent completely were the likes of Whitman, Lee, Fitzgerald, Poe, Steinbeck, Twain, Asimov, Faulkner, Bradbury, Frost, Miller, or even Vonnegut. The list goes on and on. Basically, pick your favorite great American author (who didn’t write about either black rights or socialism), and I guarantee your selection isn’t on the list.
But should they be? Read on. In his infinite wisdom, as the professor himself explained, he felt he could not adequately construct a decent microcosm of 500 years of American literature (point taken—but then, isn’t that kind of your job as an English professor?). He also offered the rather lame excuse that many of his former pupils expressed boredom with or otherwise dislike for classic American literature. So this professor’s brilliant solution to this conundrum? Don’t teach any of it! Instead, this professor has filled the void with irrelevant selections that support his own ideologies and passed it off as a so-called “modern-day focus”. He has furthermore framed all future discussions by discouraging historical context, thereby making his own views and interpretations canon and any dissenting views reprehensible.
My main issue with this disastrous setting of the course is that whichever graduate school program I choose to pursue isn’t really interested in hearing that I had an ideologically-bent (or merely incompetent) professor; they expect me to have a working knowledge of the material that was actually supposed to be in this course. This is a required course for English majors, and since I am seriously considering switching my major, this is a big deal to me. This professor has acted in a way that is irresponsible and which demonstrates he is not above taking advantage of a captive audience to spread his extremist viewpoints by passing them off as a legitimate setting of an American Literature course. I will be filing a formal complaint with the university concerning this issue; this professor’s outrageous conduct is detrimental to anyone unfortunate enough to have to take his course, and a message should be sent that I and others like me will not tolerate this sort of garbage mucking up the academic path.
I walked out on this man an hour into his despicable caricature of a course and didn’t turn back. I dropped the class five minutes later and replaced it with another required course, English Literature After 1700. This, thankfully, seems to be taught by a very competent and conventional professor, an old favorite in the department. Astonishingly, though the availability flag did not change on this course immediately after I registered, by the time I got home the course was full. I wonder idly just how many people followed me into this new course from the first one. I hope it’s a great portion of them, for their sake.
I do get one tremendous bonus (a SHINE GET!) in that, since this new class takes place from 3:00 PM to 4:20 PM on Mondays and Wednesdays, I get not only Fridays but also Thursdays off from school. I had my parents bring me some supplies so I could finish cleaning Isle Delfino (er, my room), and I proceeded home from there. All in all, an extremely trying week, but one I had conquered. My escape from the rogue professor’s poisonous interpretation of American Literature—a more fitting title for his iteration thereof would be Survey Of Political And Social Protest In America From 1950-1980—marks my crowning achievement for the week. Keeping myself from spitting on the professor’s shoes as I filed past him—an act of protest he no doubt should laud—was just icing on the cake.
You know, some things in this world are sacred and, as such, should not be changed. The MythBusters like blowing stuff up. Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser. Peter Gabriel is an insane musical genius. And, ladies and gentlemen, the cinnamon rolls at Wayne State University are the best bloody cinnamon rolls on the planet.
Scratch that. They were the best cinnamon rolls on the planet. That is, until they changed them. They changed the whole breakfast, in fact. And, in the traditional WSU spirit of making sure you get less for your dining dollar each and every semester (it’s too good for you), the change was for the worst.
The first thing I noticed was that the sausages had migrated into view in a stainless steel pan behind the wrong counter. I also noticed that there were about 4,209 individual links piled up there. Hallelujah! In my little mind (still hopeful after so much heartbreak—I’m looking at you, Elizabeth), of course my first thought was “Gee, if they pile out this much of their crappy sausage, then how much bacon is lurking just out of sight?” How much? None! Apparently, in a concession to the unreasonable but unanimous request of diners (as the cook lady exasperatedly told us), they can only stock one meat per day now that meat is a self-serve item.
Fair enough. The sausage might be crappy, but goddamnit, drown it in fake maple syrup and it makes a decent side. Plus, the ability to stock up on as much as I can carry almost mitigates its altogether crappiness. Next stop, the omlette station which, thankfully, hadn’t changed with the new semester. I got my stuff and went, hitting the drink station on the way to a table. I picked up a glass of Wild Cherry Pepsi and some OJ and went on my way. At the buffet station I spied some cherry turnovers (strawberry? raspberry? watermelon?) and…lord yes!…the Peach among Daisies, cinnamon rolls! In my excitement I failed to initially notice that they appeared a little different today. Bah! Who would notice?
Having lugged my treasure trove to a secluded table, I tucked in. The sausages were surprisingly good whilst swimming in fake maple syrup (and sprinkled with a few tablespoons of brown sugar that was lying around for no good reason), and the omlette was good except for the onions (I forget every time they never cook these things enough). In fact, I started to feel slightly nauseous after a while, which is never a good sign. Never fear, I didn’t cascade. All was well and, at last, it was time to take the first cautious nibble of my prized cinnamon bun. I lifed it to my mouth, tongue watering in anticipation, and took a bite.
Hmm. That’s strange. It’s not quite…wait a minute! This ain’t right! This ain’t right at all! Where’s the flavor? That succulent zing that can only mean one thing…what atrocities have been done here today?! They’ve stollen it, precious! It’s lost! Lost forever!
Excuse me, but a malodramatic bug crawled in my ear just now and turned me momentarily into a horrible actor. The same thing happened sometime around 1886, and the unfortunate result was musical theatre.
But even Andrew Lloyd Webber (especially Andrew Lloyd Webber) couldn’t capture the emotion, the horror, the sadness I experienced this morning. I mean, I dragged myself out of bed (which doesn’t necessarily mean I was asleep, which I wasn’t) at 7:00 AM for this breakfast, which in the past had always offered the promise of a decent, solid meal. Now the rolls weren’t always there in the past, which I’ll admit did bring me grief. But merely knowing that perhaps it wasn’t the day for the rolls to shine (get!), and that instead of putting out some insipid consolation prize for the hapless diners WSU merely left them off the menu entirely, I was always consoled until I could get those rolls once again.
Perhaps here would be a good time to diverge just a little (lest the Really Useless Group start cast auditions) and describe the turnover. It, too, was lousy. It was all flake and no filling, and what little filling there was could have been any of the possible red fruits I listed several paragraphs ago. But at least it was better than the roll, which was merely a regular roll with a little cinnamon drizzled on top. Oh, and a tiny drizzle of cream cheese garnish, nothing to the torrents that covered the real rolls.
I’m hurt. I’m hurt, and I don’t hurt easy (unless a girl is involved). I thought I could deal with Wayne State. Every day they pile on new stuff, but I thought I could take it. I even thought I could accept them snooping in my dorm room and threatening to charge me up the ying yang if I don’t clean it up by next Monday. But this? But this! There can be no forgiveness. None. We are at war, WSU and I. And I will win. And I don’t care how many crappy breakfasts I have to eat, I’ll stick around until I’ve made my stand. They can stare all they want. They can even play the soundtrack to Evita over and over. I will not rest until my cinnamon rolls are returned! Or until I fall asleep from fatigue and the utter uselessness of my actions.
In other news, today I have my last class of the week. I also have to clean my room, which is a bit of a problem because many of the 7,209 pop cans still have a risidual amount of liquid in them. So I’ll be spilling out quite a bit of stuff. I’ll need a few hours for this one. But I’ll get it done.
Well, actually though the magic of Windows Live Writer, a nifty little program that allows me to update my WordPress blogs from the comfort of my own desktop. Actually, it interfaces with the online presence of the blog, but it also allows me to create entire entries without having to log into the administrative console of WordPress, which is a decent time saver (even with the many enhancements offered by WordPress 2.7).
But what’s actually going on on this end? Well, I am still waiting with bated breath for some news as to when Nintendo will be releasing the DSi in North America. Due to the still booming sales on the current DS Lite offering, Nintendo has decided that releasing the DSi in North America is not a very high priority. Also not clear is the price, though most sources seem to indicate that this incarnation of the DS will be more expensive than past releases, at around $180. That’s a bummer, but what can you do? At least you get the ability to purchase games directly over an Internet connection, and you get 1000 DSi Points ($10) just for purchasing the unit. You can get up to two games with that amount, which isn’t bad. Something tells me Super Mario 64 isn’t going to be one of the choice, though.
My next semester at WSU begins in about 10 hours. With all late afternoon/evening classes this semester, I might actually get some sleep. Even if I’m kept up until the wee hours of the morning, I can sleep in until my classes begin, the earliest of which begins at 5:30 PM. I also get Fridays off, so that’s another bonus. I did pretty well last semester, and I’m definitely going to be on the Dean’s List. Historically, I always screw up the second semester, so we’ll see if I can’t break the trend. I only have three days this week, so it’s a nice slow beginning to what might be a rather difficult semester. I’ve got two English courses, a web design course, and the final semester of German.
I can’t really think of that much more. Just a quick update to test out the Windows Live Writer program.
Listen to this work—just listen. Put aside everything else, close your eyes, and let the music take you.
In 2004 my high school choir (Select Ensemble) performed an SSAA (or some other permutation) arrangement of this song. I remembered saying at the time, quite bluntly, that this was the piece I wanted played when I am dead. It’s places like these that the English language simply fails to have the words necessary for proper description. The statement I made about the piece might have seemed a bit blunt and surprising, but the assurance with which I said it demonstrated just how sincere I was in this request.
I remembered this work recently, after having forgotten all about it for many years. The version my choir performed was quite sparsely arranged, and the texture with chamber orchestra, organ, and solo vocalists on top of solo baritone and mixed chorus is quite different. And, merely because we always form a bond with the first performance of a work we hear, so far I have yet to find a rendition that emulates that more intimate cast. No known recording of Select Ensemble’s rendition exists, which is a shame as I would greatly like to hear it once more.
But alas, we can never resurrect the past. Hearing this piece again (in the many renditions I have so far assembled), I find that though I can still hear the magic that once captivated me, I cannot quite return to that time. It wasn’t a particularly good time. I had recently suffered a devastating heartbreak, I was almost perpetually sick, and the weather was miserable. The first of these three was by far the most salient; the first of many such pains I suffered over the years. And yet, despite all this, I still long for that time. Perhaps it’s because, though sometimes painful, my emotions were very strong at that time. Every “era” I have experienced since then has but paled in comparison. Also, I was very close to my friends at the time, and I did forge some very pleasant memories with them.
Whatever the reason, listening to “In Paradisum” again I feel a sort of unsettling longing, a faint sadness—not because of the music itself, but because, though I can see it, I am barred from that emotional reservoir of four years ago by a glass wall, ever transparent but ever impassible. Four years later, I’ve lost my dearest friend to the mists of uncertainty. She could be dead for all I know. And, to me, she may as well be, and it is for her that I play this portion of the Requiem, if only in memory of a time when she herself sang the melody.
My vintage 1979 stereo receiver has a sticky right channel. Nothing a little DeoxIT couldn’t fix, except I have absolutely no clue how to open the damned case. You’d think it would just be just some screws or something, but the thing has a wood veneer case, which appears to be stapled together in the back. I get the impression that the circuitry slides out if you unscrew every single visible screw and somehow get the control knobs off the front of the unit, but I’m not about to try it. It needs to be recapped, anyway (all original capacitors—a ticking time-bomb, in other words), and there’s a few burned out resistors lurking on some of the lower-power PCBs, and the unit tends to pop when being turned on and off if you don’t remember to turn all the speaker channels off first. Oh, and the transformer hums in the audio channel. Other than that, it’s a gorgeous unit, both in looks and sound (though the light behind the tuning reception meter blinked out about two years ago). Someday I’ll get around to fixing it. But for now I’ll have to live with all its little quirks.
Not really a good blogging subject. I’m just describing my day. It has been sort of a lazy day, all told. At least I think I’m finally caught up on sleep. For certain reasons the past few days I’ve been behind in the sleep department. It’s mostly because I stay up all night and, for the past few days, I’ve been unable to sleep during the day. Today I made it until 4:30 PM, so that recharged my batteries. Now I’m just listening to some Genesis on my now unstuck receiver, and wondering what thoroughly exciting things will happen tonight. If anything.
We’ll keep it short and sweet. About twenty minutes ago, I was just sitting in front of the television when a Reese’s commercial came on. As its music, it used the opening strains of Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity” from The Planets. This is without a doubt my favorite piece in all of classical music, if only for the gorgeous middle section. It should be semi-familiar to even the uninitiated, but if you need your memory refreshed, here’s the section in question:
Some things just cannot be expressed in words. The beauty of this piece of music is one of those things. It has been my favorite melody for as long as I can remember. To me, it is the symbol of hope before that word got trademarked by political campaigns. It is timeless, ageless, and peerless. It’s the sort of melody I hope to write someday. A hundred years from now when the majority of modern artists are all but forgotten, people will still be playing this piece of music and gaining inspiration from it. There are no words (though the British tried to lyricize it). It needs no words. It speaks in a language all who truly listen can understand.
Anybody else have a piece of music (no matter what kind) with which he or she has forged such a connection?
It has been a very long time since I updated here. I notice that, on occasion, a few people would drop in here but nobody seemed to stay long. And this makes since considering I haven’t been updating at all. What can I say? Life got busy, with college and what not. I considered going into a long-winded description of what happened since I last posted, but there’s no way I could relate it all, so I won’t even bother. It’s not really interesting, anyway; it was just time-consuming.
In any event, I just upgraded all my blogs to WordPress 2.7. There was a scary bit there where the first blog I attacked (Rydertech) threw up a fatal error after the upgrade. It turns out I forgot to replace some files in the root folder, and after scratching my head for about five minutes I figured it out. Everything went smoothly from there on out, though of course it took the better part of half an hour to do all five. This is precisely the reason I skipped the point releases; it’s just such a pain in the royal arse to update five separate blogs every time a tiny alteration in the code is announced.
Version 2.7 supposedly fixes all this with an automatic updating scheme. If true, then this will have just made my day, and hopefully it will make me more likely to update here more often.