And shall they pay me? (may for shall... what, you don't know obscure Lewis Carroll references?)

So I'm now enrolled in the Conservatory here. I only registered for one class, though. I was considering taking up a new instrument, but then I discovered how much I just paid for that one class. Bloody Hell. Probably because I picked the theory/comp department head as my tutor. If I can do amazing enough in this class (highly doubtful), maybe I'll try to tackle some of the next classes on my own.

I also expect to be accepted into grad studies pretty soon, as in, it's inconceivable that I wouldn't be, now that they have all my documents. I dimly recall saying that I would definitely go if I was accepted. Further qualification: if it's financially feasible. Meaning, they'd better darn well pay me to go. A Master's degree of any kind is, in my opinion, useless in and of itself. I'm not going to pay to listen to profs Crakespasming for two years, and then be right back where I am today. If I don't get to do research (assistant style) or TAing or tutor-mentoring or heck even marking, there's no point in going.

• Lovely, I received a job offer from my favourite type of workplace: a call center! Enjoy a career with our company and enjoy many... "Benefits & Perks!" Maybe they'd consider hiring me to improve that slogan.
  

La la la la LINOLEUM!!

• The Peabody Institute has many excellent recordings of complete works, with all movements. But not enough :( Also, Bartok is one of my new heroes, but nobody can ever supplant Liszt.
  


• That's fake Latin anyway. We should all encourage its death. And then bring back Classical Latin! I do like this quotation, though: "St Augustine thought in Latin, you can't read his text in English, it's like listening to Mozart through a jukebox." Just replace "St Augustine" with "Horace" or "Octavian," and yes, my thoughts exactly!
  


• Return of the drawings. That is to say, I've rebuilt the drawings site. Still no new ones, so I guess they haven't quite returned.

You must see this

• Everyone should be required to watch this video on Global Dimming. Please. I'll bet you've never even heard of Global Dimming before.


• Well glory be, I'm on page 3!


• MySpace! Xanga! Umm... let's see what else can I add... I really just wanted to find somewhere to upload the Numa Numa dance and possibly the Screech Fire. Will maybe get around to that. The Xanga site is theoretically going to be my writing page. For whenever I want to pretend I'm a writer.
  

This is what I've been doing lately:

1. Banjo Cuttlebort, ____ is the new manager of the Antonio Sporting Centre, arrived in Quebec City last week.
   • (A) he
   • (B) who
   • (C) which
   • (C) that

Invisible Man (And His Talking Cat)

It's reversible... should it be reversed? Is it satisfactory? The menus shouldn't pose too much of a problem, I hope.

• I am worth exactly $2,413,058. I am also a centrist. Or, perhaps more accurately, an anarchist with collectivist leanings (approximately an anti-George-Bush).


• Check out my new movie trailer

Of pens and words

• The Eight Phases of the Bic Biro
• Definitions that require new words

My temporary homepage is back here again. Yes, yes, yet another new style. I think this will be the final one. A lot is missing (especially the awesome version of the lapsionary, but especially all my drawings).

My hypothetical ARCT schedule

I could do the examination papers in any order, but here's what I have in mind:

Table 1. Double ARCT in Composition and Theory, with English Graduate Studies

Year	Fall	Spring
1	Renaissance Counterpoint History 1	Baroque Harmony and Counterpoint I Baroque Harmony and Counterpoint II
2	Classical Harmony and Counterpoint History 2	Romantic and Post-Romantic Harmony and Counterpoint Post-1900 Composition Techniques
3	Orchestration I Analysis	Orchestration I (continued) Orchestration II Ear Test
4	Composition 1: solo instrument Composition 2: Chamber or choral work Composition 3: Work for orchestra ~5,000-word research paper
5	Oral Defense

Table 2. Double ARCT without English Graduate Studies

Year	Fall	Spring	Summer
1	Renaissance Counterpoint History 1	Baroque Harmony and Counterpoint I History II	Baroque Harmony and Counterpoint II Analysis
2	Classical Harmony and Counterpoint Romantic and Post-Romantic Harmony and Counterpoint Orchestration I	Post-1900 Composition Techniques Orchestration II	Ear Test
3	3 Compositions (as above) Research paper		Oral Defense

I am (for possibly the first time ever) positive about what I want to do with the rest of my life. It would go faster without the Master's degree, but if I get accepted to grad school I will do it for sure because I also want to delve into some Anglo Saxon critical theory. I'm being optimistic in being able to learn orchestration quickly, what with having no background in any instrument other than the piano (man, there'll be different clefs to learn, not to mention silly things like trombone positions, harp pedalling, fingering, bowing... all these things I know nothing about. And do you think there's even one exam on choral composing? Of course not, because everybody looks down on singers and singers have to shell out for friggin' accompanists and nobody pays choristers and every instrumentalist gets to be in several ensembles/orchestras but singers have to mostly be alone and you always have to miss out on pit parties because you might catch a cold for your jury tomorrow... It is an instrument, and it's damn hard work to excel at... but this ARCT isn't about singing anyway so whatever, I'll just learn the bloody orchestration). So yes, optimistic. I learn easily when I'm interested. Also, the miracle of RCM is you can take the exams anywhere in Canada. I'm not sure about taking classes... as it is, I'll have to take Gr. 5 Analysis by correspondence. Gr. 5. My gosh, there are so many ARCT classes.

Damn this internet

January 29-February 2 is Week of Climate Action! (ohhhh... I missed the Royal Roads viewing of An Inconvenient Truth by thiiis much... no wait, more like thiiiis much. Aha, I can still make two more Global Warming lectures. Show those Facebookers what for.)

My gosh, I could do without any sense (especially ESP) as long as I had my hearing. Damn I love that ocean of sound. You know, the one that washes over you when you're in rehearsal and you stop singing for just a second and you're pretty sure you'd be buoyant if you just let yourself fall forwards... yeah I still remember that. Oh my word.

Haha, my webhost has now completely disappeared, there is no longer even a logon page. Haha, I forgot to make a backup after I converted everything to php. Haha, haha, I'm hysterical with all this banging my head against the wall.

Facebook is addicting, but my groups are infested with complete assholes, rabid ignoramuses, and general jerks (excluding Herpelhode, of course, which you should join because it's starting to be a repeat of every group I've ever created...p.s. join my groups, dammit). Rage approaching upper limit. More head banging. I'd better stay away from that Government + Religion = Disaster group. I don't have the energy to suppress the urge to kick baptists in the shins.

And the SMEF returns for good

Arrrrg, I hate my stupid unreliable server that occasionally (like all this week so far) disappears. I can't wait until it expires. I want my domain back! I have several music scores that need posting.

I'm so craving a sandwich right now, but the last thing I ate felt like I was swallowing saw blades—no exaggeration. Mmmmm, toothy.

• Oh my... volunteering to be tazered, are we? He looks slightly pained.


• Whoa there, Iran? Why am I always behind the times? Back in the 9/11 days when I had no TV, I was all "what, Iraq? You mean Afghanistan, right?" There is no logic. Once again, I maintain this. Damn hypocrisy.


• "We both know there are no guaranteed cures, whether in medicine, nutrition, herbs or anything else. Complete healing...including mind, body and spirit...is possible, from God. If you want God's help with your health problem, go to Help From God." ?! You call this medical advice?? So does God have a blog or something where I could maybe add my name to some waiting list? So much crap on the internet. I guess I'm adding a lot to it though, so I shouldn't complain.
  


• A BC Ferries sign

National De-lurking Week

It's National De-lurking Week!

So if you are a:

• lurker
• loiterer
• layabout
• passerby
• peripatetic
• skulker
• just curious
• otherwise furtive
• all of the above

you must post a comment at this time or I will be terribly devastated. It's a general requirement.

I am teh smrt

When I was little the only thing I could do on the computer was play Typing Tutor. I tried for probably a day to start up golf (my gosh, you only had to type in one word: "golf") before I finally realized I was spelling it wrong. I was very little.

Other than Typing Tutor and certain other simplistic dos games, I never touched a computer until I was in Gr. 7. I had never heard of Windows until I was in Gr. 8. The next year, or the one after that, I think I learned how to look something up on the internet. When I got my own computer after I graduated, I didn't hook it up to the internet until the spring of 2005.

The point of all of this is that I've always labeled myself as "not a computer person." When I was a tech and people would call in saying "I'm not really a computer person," I would say "me neither." When a prof asked me to help design his website one time I said "I don't know anything about computers." The other day on the bus I was talking with a girl who said she liked programming in html, and I said "I'm not good at that kind of stuff."

Wait, wait, wait... I disagree. I have absolutely no CS-type background. The most formal education in computers I ever got was how to make a sine wave in QBasic in high school (half the time we were doing computers; the other half we had typing practice on typewriters. Typewriters!) But after the bus episode I looked up the girl's site and it looked pretty much like she had entered some text into a pre-existing template. Modesty has its limits, and I hope I'm justified in believing my own site is far more advanced than that. I've certainly put enough work into it, way more work than I devoted to many of my university classes. I've learned a heck of a lot on my own, it's fun, I like it... I wish now that I could design that prof's website because I'll happily spend 6+ hours a day in front of my computer. My own site has been a gigantic evolutionary puzzle. Can you remember how it used to be? I barely can, though I know I started learning more than the basics about programming when I wanted to make my magic appearing links. That was the first puzzle, and I eventually figured it out. And then, how can I make it nicer, better, more impressive, more interactive, bigger, stronger, blonder... that kind of thing. So I learn more, until I work it out. Now I'm liking php. It's never strong enough, or blond enough, and although I say "completed! perfected!" it will never be.

So my latest addition is the thesaurus. In theory, it will offer sesquipedalian synonyms for common words, but I don't have very many words in there right now (you could look up "goatlike," but you probably already know my synonym for that one, at least if you've read the lapsionary).

In the end, I really don't know much about computers, especially programming. But I get an idea of what I want (be it invisible links that appear when the cursor passes over them or whatever) and I keep fiddling until it happens. Fiddle fiddle.

The awesome website that has since disappeared

Complete: this one does have a partial black hole (I never got around to it last time); the Lapsionary is fully searchable, and you can also submit new words; the photo gallery is newish; drawings are no longer blogs. Please let me know if anything is awry.

Weery = wary + leary

Lots and lots of time spent on the computer lately has apparently increased my nerd score:


Before I went to Paris, my Mom convinced me that most people are pickpockets. Then in Paris, I steered well clear of anyone loitering around on sidewalks, which is why I didn't have the fun adventures with bracelet-sellers and such that certain other people had. Since then I've always been paranoid that people I pass on the sidewalk will try to mug me, but I'm pretty sure now that that's not true. Everybody I pass these days just smiles, or sometimes strikes up a conversation. Life is easier when you're not weery of people. (I'm fond of that word—weery—try to guess what I mean by it.)

In Victoria!

Live from Victoria! On The Super Bort! I've missed this computer + high speed internet. Now I can play on Facebook all the time. Except Facebook's not so much fun anymore; my only friends seem to be Banjo Cuttlebort and The Dickens. Yep, I'm accumulating fictional friends.

On the way here I concluded that I must be crazy. What the ✗ am I doing on this plane? Things are so very very uncertain. I like having things all planned out, but I have nothing I'm "supposed" to do before next fall (assuming I get accepted, which I sure won't if good ol' Engl Dept Head keeps withholding his reference letter).

Damn you, beef jerky.

Moving time approacheth

Oh my goodness... I am moving tomorrow morning. I'm so nervous. Very excited, but also scared. Up to now, everything in my life has been laid out before me and it didn't take much to just walk through it. This is the first time I've ever taken any sort of leap. Plus I don't know the first thing about living in a city. I'm also pretty paranoid that something will happen to The Super Bort on the airplane (I'm very protective).

Some things you just can't predict how they'll affect your life. Then there are other things that you know are turning points. NYC was one of those, and as I sat in rehearsal for 9 hours every day I felt it was the most important thing I had ever done. Paris and Berlin topped that, and I knew it was an incredible once-in-a-lifetime experience. But this... well this tops everything. Life will never be the same again. Hopefully the plane won't crash. (Fun fact: when I went to Quebec, I was positive that the plane would crash and I would never return home [this was shortly after 9/11]. My biggest concern at the time was that I would never get to watch The Fellowship of the Ring again. Hoo boy.)