A demonstration that I might be made out of magical funky goodness

Behold: this is the lead-singer for tasty funk-joy band, Jamiroquai. Watch him dance, in his fancy hat.

I watched this video way too many times, and this is the closest I could get:

The colors are much less bland in reality, but that's the down-side of shitty webcams. Teehee! I feel creative and wonderful.

Totally unnecessary

I had an audition last night. I thought it went well; hell, with the exception of the G-Flat that I naturalized, I think I gave one hell of a performance.

Nonetheless, they haven't called me back with the results. There were only fifteen people auditioning, only six of them bassists, and they still can't tell me what they thought of it.

*twitch*

Some form of Snow White

I drove home from Ann Arbor Sunday night, having spent a signifigant chunk of the evening parked in front of a friend's TV grappling hairy beasts and jamming swords into them. And debating, the whole time: I can barely afford to pay rent with this ridiculous new job. Can I really afford to buy Shadow of the Collosus?

Eventually I decided that just mooching off the purchases of others would have to suffice for now, and back I went to my apartment. I pulled in to a parking space conveniently outside my doorstep (unusual at two in the morning), and saw that there was a skunk in the lawn right outside the front steps, dragging a College Inn pizza box around.

On the one hand, it was freaking adorable. Skunks are cute little critters, and someone told me once that they make fine pets, once your have their scent glands taken out. They're small and they're frisky and their tails are poofy and snuggleable. Warner Brothers didn't have a huge challenge in making Pepe le Pew a charming character (though in these days, his persistance would be deemed stalking and possibly sexual assault).

On the other hand, adorable thought it may be, I'm not fond of skunk-reek, and I didn't want it to be all over my clothes. The skunk was happily nibbling a hole into the box he was dragging around, and seemed to be ignoring me, but what would happen when I approached the stairs?

I had two options: I could drive to another parking spot, then go around the building to the back door, or I could just be a jerk and interfere with nature's beautiful cycle of scavenging.

I picked up an empty soda can from my car, hid behind the door, and threw it in the skunk's direction. It jumped in the air, and then scrambled into the hole it had chewed in the pizza box.

At first I thought my vision had failed me, and I turned my headlights back on. Not seeing anything new, I flipped them back off, and walked up the pathway onto the front stairs, watching the pizza box as I went.

Sure enough, as soon as I was safely hiding behind the stairway, the skunk poked its head out of the hole, looked around briefly, and started pulling itself out. It then turned around, pulled a crust out from behind it, and dashed off around the other side of the building. I continued onward, smelling like deodorant, rather than musk, and went to bed.

In other news: After a four month wait, I finally had that appointment with a dermatologist. Lady says that I look pretty much skin cancer free, but that I have a flat mole in my hair I'll have to have someone else check on if I'm ever getting my hair braided. Crazy stuff.

Fifteen minutes left at work

All I can think about is that leftover Chinese food in my fridge. It was a terrible, mega-stupid mistake to eat nothing but a handful of almond M&Ms before I came to work today.

Okay, small lie. Leftover chinese food and all of the events associated with the time when they weren't leftovers yet. Video games and swapping fluids. But it's not good to think about that too hard at work, or I'll just start blushing. And I wouldn't want to be sitting at my desk, vapid smile on my face, cheeks burning read.

Or maybe I would.

Sigh.

So.
Damn.
Hungry.

Seven of twelve roses agree, he loves you.

Interpretation: His feelings towards you are ambiguous, but probably in your favor.

One of the women who lives where I work received a dozen double delights from her husband's college; he'd taught there for many years, apparently impressed a lot of people, to such an extent that she still gets roses from them on various occasions. As with many of the folks here, she likes to show off the flowers they receive, so I end up tending a lot of vases in the front lobby.

I generally like that sort of work; cutting stems, arranging flowers and the crap that gets sent with them so they're only moderately haphazard. I usually snap off a couple of petals when I'm asked to do this, and I will run my thumb along the basin of the petal. It's silly and comforting, a secret stress-relief. Nowadays, it just makes me sneeze a lot, but I do it anyway.

Eventually the roses start to wilt and look sad, and before they get too pathetic I'll throw them away. But I get to have my way with them before they go, and in this case I played he-loves-you-he-loves-you-not with fifty dollars of someone else's floral arrangement.

Is this why tuition is so high?

Experience is a nasty bitch

So last Wednesday, I got a good solid whang in the back of the head with a cello case. I'm not gonna lie; it hurt a whole lot, and I told the carrier of the cello as much.

Now, oddly for being smashed in the back of the skull, I had an instant full-lobed headache. Also, I was pretty dizzy; carrying my bass down the hall seemed unnecessarily balance-challenging. I made it through orchestra (the throbbing asymmetry of Mars didn't help matters), walked my bass back, and drove home. (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't think about what a bad idea that was until later.) I walked in to the apartment, went to pee, washed my hands, and took a long look in the mirror.

It would have been a brief glance, except that I noticed my pupils were engorged for no reason.

Actually, said that snarky inner monologue, they're dilated for a very good reason; you have a concussion, dumbass.

It was about then that I got a call from my Escape Valve from the Estrogen Pit, asking what I was doing tonight. I told him I was really goddamn tired and sort of wanted to nap for a while, not to mention the terrible headache from intersecting vectors with a cello case. He pointed out that common knowledge has strong beliefs against sleeping after a head wound.

So I did the next natural thing; I called my mom and freaked her out, asking questions about how injured should I be before I went to the ER. She said it was cool and I could sleep, which I proceeded to do with passionate nappitude.

Post-nap, I went to hang out with the EVfEP (though there was only one person present for that terrible event), and established my new, total inability to communicate in an intelligent fashion for the next twenty-four hours. Which leads us back to the underlying music theme, you see, because the next evening I had to go to Music Theory class.

Dr. Iannaccone began playing this piece by Mendelssohn, and asked me what technique was being employed to mix up the variations. Now, what was happening was this: a theme was being introduced in the top voice, and while it continued on to new material, that same theme was played in the lower voice. This technique is called 'imitation,' because music theorists aren't that creative when they're naming things. It's frequently used in the works of J. S. Bach.

I stared at him blankly, trying to be as uncreative as I could possibly be, and I failed, utterly. The word was not coming to my mind, regardless of how desperately I tried to pull something from the shaken recesses of my mind.

Finally, with infinite blanditude, I asked if he was just Bachin' it up.

That got a laugh out of him and the class, and he didn't ask me another question for a significant portion of the class. Fortunately then I got it right. (Deutsche uber-massige sechste Korden <3)

Aside: Haha, Jake, I managed to use both throbbing AND engorged in a totally non-sexual context. HA HA.

Conundrummery

So here's the trouble.

My current plan is to go to sleep, wake up, and drive to New York, all daisy fresh and cheerful and whatnot. Perhaps I'll stop at some style of megastore and buy some new music, perhaps not.

The trouble is, though, that I'm not tired. Not remotely. There is a comfortable bed several feet from me, and I'd love to go over there and crash out on it, but the impulse to crash out is not yet existant. It refuses to well up in me and take dominance. I'm just here, awake, and, horrors! Feeling PRODUCTIVE, like I should go make sure every little thing is packed, so that I can jet out as soon as I wake up, which I'll never do if I never sleep.

This is a job for Valerian, I suppose, except that I'd hate to drive all that way burping up that terrible ass flavor.

Really, this is just a job for whining.

WHIIIIIIIIINE.

It's mine, mine, gloriously mine!

My roommates have all left for their respective Christmas breaks, and for however many hours between the time when I get home tonight and when I wake up tomorrow and leave for my parent's house, the apartment is MINE.

And the anticipation is AMAZING.

I have these beautiful plans to make Tequila Sunrises and proceed to play Soul Calibur 2 until I'm uselessly incoherent, eating white rice and uncooked past in the meantime. Maybe I'll invite other people, maybe I'll just make a night of it on my lonesome, screaming incoherent obsceneties at Voldo as he smoothly breakdances his way across the screen.

Bliss.

In other news, I fabricated a walk of shame yesterday.

The hole in our ceiling has been more or less patched up. When I left the apartment, Sam was waiting for the painters to come and re-monotonize the ceiling colors. We gave them a bit of a start yesterday; neither of us had expected them to return until this afternoon, but they wanted to put down some preliminary coats before the real work began.

In spite of the hour, Sam had just woken up. Since his bedroom is a bit on the trashed side - all that couldn't be shoved into a desk was shoved onto the bunk bed - so he spent the evening (and most of the morning, and a section of the early afternoon) sleeping on the love-seat sized bean bag chair occupying our living room floor. He slept in his boxers, and I would occasionally wander in and out of the living room to find him recurled into a new form of fetal ball. Occasionally we would talk, but the conversations were usually cut short because he would fall back asleep. I wasn't looking too sheveled myself, since I didn't have any significant plans for the day that required me looking particularly presentable.

Understand, nothing about Sam's appearnace would strike a stranger as being inherently homosexual. He was just rousing when the painters arrived, and was still mostly unclothed when they knocked on the door. He stood to the right of the door, debating whether to put clothes on if it was just a friend stopping by (as the blog's title would imply, we live in a lingerie colony; full nudity isn't approved of in mixed company, but anything short of it doesn't raise any eyebrows), and I opened the door a crack, since I was on my way out to run some errands.

"Hello?" I asked.

"We're here for the roof," they replied.

"Ah," I said, then turned to my right. "Sam, put your pants on."

The maintenance men gave me a curious, nosy look, as we all waited and listened to the rustling of blue jeans. They guffawed and nudged each other, and I smiled blandly. They looked at my semi-disheveled hair and smiled broadly. (How little they know. In reality, my sex hair is much less coherent.)

"Okaaaay," Sam said, and I opened the door and let them all in, and waved goodbye as I left, running my fingers through my hair.

(This story was much funnier in my head.)

Hey, my bass is back (so you better start a-runnin)

Strange day; I woke up for the dozenth time in the semi-light of my room, this time because my alarm clock was chattering rather than the other times, because it seemed like a rouse-worthy idea until the necessary time passed in which I recognized my surroundings and went back to sleep. Then there was the arguement to stay in bed; the boiler is still in a state of half-repair, so convincing myself to slip out from under that exquistively warm comforter is exceptionally tricky. Sadly, the little voice in my head reminded me that if I stayed there too long, I'd fall back asleep, and that would mean I'd be late for work, and then I'd be fired, and oh, the horrors. Overall laziness, to avoid looking for other work, overrode temporary laziness. The next task was to make it to the shower and wash the smell of hippy out of me. (Surprisingly enough, the elderly are not generally fond of hippy-smell. I myself like to twiddle with my hair and get a nice little whiff of Nag Champa, but at some point in your life span I'll apparently cross a line where it must, MUST be only Herbal Essences.)

Work was the usual tedium; stay awake, do Nonograms for eight hours, go home. Except this time, I swung by the music building, picked up the loaner bass I'd been leant, and skipped back to the mall to switch back for my beloved Phinaes. I hung about Borders, trying to look nonchalant (which is hard, with the nice-work-outfit with the cashmere and the heels, and a wonderful blue lump strapped to me. Small children watched me in fascination. Teenagers milling around Hot Topic, struggling to be alternative, stared in silent awe. I stood and read, keeping an eye on the poor sales clerk who couldn't decide whether they should start a conversation with me or not. Eventually my cell rang and I booked across the mall (Note: Attention whores! Jogging through a mall with a bass on in heels is an INSTANT attractor), stopping only once to laugh in the face of that one, necessary, ballsy bastard that asked if I wished I played piccolo. No, of course I don't! I was getting my bass back, my delightful darling dearest!

And life was all roses and gumdrops again.

Everything in this blog will probably be about music.

I'm at work now, and rather irate about it; partly because I didn't sleep at all last night, and partly because, in the rush to be presentable and make breakfast and dinner and get that tangled lump out of my hair and get to the dealership for my new plates, I neglected to brush my teeth, and my hands still reek of garlic. At least the hangover is gone. (So strange, to feel one develop, to feel each of my teeth stopping in the course of their daily activities and say hello...)

I got a call last night from Aaron Reiley, who is the wonderful man fixing my baby Phinaes. (Had I read A Seperate Peace before I named my bass, I would never, ever, ever have decided to name my bass that.) He left a voice mail on my cell, saying "Hey, this is Aaron Reiley; we've got your bass opened up, and it looks like you have a pretty decent sized bass bar."

Strange pause.

"If you could give me a call, my cell number is..."

I puzzled over this on the way to the grocery store; why would he call and leave such a bizzare, confused message? I called him back, got his voice mail, and asked what it was that he was implying in his message. He called back, with startling promptitude, and asked if it would be alright if he removed the current bass bar and put one in more appropriately sized; he felt that the thing was too much support, crudely carved from the front of the bass instead of a seperate piece glued in, and that since the bass was already open, a big portion of the labor fee would be waived...

On the one hand, it would do magical things for my sound (he tells me), but on the other hand, it would mean another week or two of waiting to get my baby back, another two weeks of mediocre practice on their loaner. Don't get me wrong, it's an alright bass for orchestral playing, but all of my solo work sounds like I'm hearing it with wax shoved in my ears, and maybe in my nose for unnecessary extra blockage. I covet my bass, and am wary of random, excessive surgery to its delicate, curvy frame.

Oi.

Things that aren't supposed to happen.

So let's go through things my bass has done to betray me:
1. Let's see... a week before my jury my first semester of sophomore year (maybe?), the eyelet in my bow stripped itself. Just on a whim. "You don't need bow tension to play," the eyelet decided. "I'll just relax for a bit."
2. During one concert, the G string just started buzzing. Apparently leaving the bass in the hall overnight wasn't enough to adjust it to the temperature, because out of nowhere half of the notes on the string started wailing away with this extra, unnecessary noise.
3. Let us never forget the performance of Michael Schelle's Samurai, where my bass, restrung with lower tension solo strings, vomited the bridge onto the stage, and then had some sort terrible spasm that left the sound post rolling along the bottom of the stomach.
4. The day of my junior recital, my professor decided I should keep the E string tuned to D, rather than adjusting the string up a whole step as the rest of the strings had been. I guess that's not something my bass did, but I hope that during my next recital, I don't have "Remember! Your E-string is STILL a D-String" written on my wrist.
5. Last night, as I was putting my bass into the car to move it to Pease auditorium, the right shoulder caved in a little, in a little mold of my right hand. If there's one thing I'm pretty sure about, it's that your bass should never make a squishy noise. EVER.

I think I should change my bass' name to Lady Macbeth; just as likely to stab you in the back at the most inopportune time as not.
Sigh; off to Grand Rapids to get a good fixing.

Morning nonsense

Kate and Sam and I drove to Toledo last night, for all the love that's involved in Beethoven 5 and Shostakovich 11. It was a warm and wonderful sort of performance; I had mixed feelings about the third movement of the Shosty, but the most of it was intense and brutal and bestial, mixed in with the gentle caresses of strings and bells. Love.

Apparently this inspired Sam more than we'd anticipated, because this morning, I woke up to the vicious, hateful strains of Shostakovich 10's second movement. On the one hand, I was moderately annoyed to be awoken less than eight hours after I'd gone to sleep. On the other hand, I love that song a great deal, and it was almost a nice way to wake up.

Delicious.