Martha Stewart does not live here.

I'd rather be watching The Golden Girls.

Technology.

So here are my typical uses of technology:

— Computer: So I usually use this device every day.  Mostly for school though.  If school nowadays weren’t online, I don’t think I would use the computer half as a much as I do.  

— Television: I guess I watch television every other day, for the most part.  Sometimes I will watch TV shows on my computer though, so … hmm.

— Cell phone: I use this every day.  Mostly for reading emails and checking my horoscope, though.  I detest talking on a phone, so I don’t use it for that.

— Car: This depends on my needs, really.  I usually walk everywhere, but maybe two or three times a week, I’ll use my vehicle.  I usually listen to my MP3 player while I’m driving, so I guess that counts as another technology too.

I would say with great conviction that I am addicted to none of these.  In fact, I would love nothing more than to throw all of them out the window.  I would too, except for the fact that school is nay impossible without internet access and/or a computer nowadays.  Many days I will go without using my cell phone or turning on my computer just out of personal desire, provoking my friends to think I had died or gotten in a horrible accident, thoughts which make me laugh.  

Not out of humor, but out of pity.  

I’m sorry your external life is so meaningless and hollow that you funnel it into pixels and microprocessors.  Because that’s what technology is.  That friend request you just accepted doesn’t mean anything in the real world.

Technology sickens me.

If you could create a national holiday, what would it be an why that one?

I would create a national holiday on my birthday, of course.  Not only would it be excellent for my ego, the nature of my spiritualism calls for it.  As an atheistic Satanist, one’s birthday is the premier and most significant holiday of the year.  Halloween, despite common assumptions, holds very little actual value to most Satanists.  Unless they want it to, that is.  But first and foremost, as you are your own self-actualized deity, one’s day of birth is THE day to celebrate.  And, hey, a national holiday with my namesake plastered on it wouldn’t make me feel bad at all!

If you could travel to any other country, which one would it be?

If I could travel to any other country, I would most likely choose Brazil.  There is something about the way of life that is exceptionally comforting to me.  I would not want to live there, but as far a travel goes, it is high up on my list.  They’re statistically among the happiest people in the world, and not to mention gorgeous!  A joint after work?  ”Why not?!” they would say! 

Say one day you woke up and no longer knew your age and could choose to be any age you wanted, what age would you choose to be and why?

I would choose an age of 1,000 years or upwards, simply due to my interest in time dilation.  What I mean is that one’s perception of time speeds up with age. This makes sense: for instance when you are 10 years of age, a year represents 10% of your life, and seems like a very long time. However, when you are 50 years old, one year has reduced to only 2% of your life, and hence seems only one-fifth as long.  This is apparent when back in elementary school, summer vacations seemed to go on forever, yet today they seems to last a much shorter time.  This phenomenon is proven mathematically.  Life is half over at age ten, and three quarters over at age thirty.  So imagine, if I were 1,000 years old, a 50 year marriage would have the equivalence of that someone I dated for a few months back in high school.  Then imagine if I were a million years old.  The very concept is astounding: people would erupt into and out of being around you.  Cultural concepts would become meaningless, as you would see trends appear and disappear, only to go faster and faster as time went on.  It is mind boggling, and I would love to experience it!

Imagine that you were the captain of the giant Titanic. On the day it sank, would you get on the emergency boat to escape, or would you stay on the ship until its last moment on the water surface? Explain why.

This is a difficult question to answer with certainty.  As I value my life over the life of any other, I am inclined to say the former.  However, the answer depends on the situational aspects of the sinking.  If I could stay on the ship until the last moment, helping others escape, and still be able to save my own life, I would certainly do so.  However, if I could judge that my life would be in certain danger in doing so, and the ship is in no way close to salvation, I would without doubt go on a rescue boat.  Then again, I’m reminded of the classic sea-faring axiom the “captain goes down with the ship,” a mostly unfounded tale.  In reality, the captain will always look out for themselves as well.  So with this in mind, I say: I will see to the other passengers’ safe egress, but within the limitations of saving my own life, the epitome of importance.  In the case of the Titanic, there simply weren’t enough lifeboats for the number of passengers, and this adds another layer of complexity to the situation.  If a large number of passengers must go down with the ship no matter what, I certainly would not want to be one of them.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Clément Janequin

—Le Chant des Oiseaux

Soundtrack #6: Folie à Deux (REMIX)

There it is: my gleaming coat of armour.  The armour I fought in.  Died in.  Every so often, I drift here to visit it.  A simple moment is all I need to relive that past.  It only found it perchance, really.  I was sojourning through Boston, MA, stopping here and there upon finding others like myself.  The others who are caught in that flimsy membrane between the living and the dead; spirits, specters, ghosts.  At the time, I was on a kick helping out those I could, helping them cross over.  Who said chivalry is dead?  Well, I guess technically it is.  Semantics.  In any event, my ephemeral travels suddenly took on a vastly different color the moment I saw this place.  A hotel, I think the contemporaries call them.  We certainly didn’t have them like this five hundred years ago, in the Tudor England of my home.  Thatched roofs and wattle and daub walls are certainly a thing of the past.  Yet there it was.  A castle, in the middle of Framingham.  No ordinary castle, but one of those picturesque, impervious fortresses in the lush fields of rural Scotland, those kind of castles where I grew up.  Where I trained many long days in the keep in order to enter knighthood.  Where I lived, where I loved, and where I died.  Over the heavy, bolted doors to the lobby hung a decorative coat of arms.  The crest is not one I recognize.  The facade even had fashionable turrets of heavy stone that loom over the adjacent highway, keeping guard.  Although, I can’t imagine what wars are waged here.  If those people down there with their totes of luggage scurrying to their slumber knew the violence and illness that truly pervaded castles such as these, would they still stay? 

Today though, I now realize this is just an imitation to entertain the fellows that travel through here looking for lodging.  Out front, a bus of young students is gathering their things, undoubtedly to stay here.  In a flash, so quickly I’m not even sure I heard it, my otherworldy ears recognize a favourite tune from my past, Le Chant des Oiseaux.  As a supernatural entity, my senses are heightened, my faculties of empathy are magnified, among many other things. I float through the front doors, my diaphanous body passing through with ease.  In the lobby, I find students shuffling by, carrying various suitcases and oddly shaped cases, presumably filled with musical instruments of sorts.  Over by my brilliant armour, there is a young man, staring intently.  I tune into his emotional wavelength.  Well.  That’s certainly not what I expected.  Nostalgia.  There’s more though.  He’s thinking about Oliver Cromwell.  Vivaldi’s Cantabile and Handel’s Larghetto sound through his ears into mine.  This is most unusual.  And just like that, with a solid, gentle closing of the elevator doors, his nostalgia is gone.  I was under the impression, despite this building’s duplicitous masquerade act of Tudor England, that the life of my past was dead.  Did anyone yearn for that time, as much as I yearn for release from this wicked prison of in-between-consciousness?  This random boy’s nostalgia: for a moment, he was there.  He might as well have gone off to the haberdashery or apothecary afterwards.  

I believe it now: nothing lasts, but nothing is lost …

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Clément Janequin

—Le Chant des Oiseaux

Soundtrack #5: Folie à Deux

“OFF THE BUS,” shouts the living effigy of a dictator, my orchestra director, as I’m listening to one of my favorites, Le Chant des Oiseaux.  No, I don’t really think of her as a despot or tyrant.  After all, the profession calls for a sharp voice.  As ordered, I take out my earbuds and my fellow comrades and I file out of the stagnant-air-filled bus to the refreshing, invigorating Northern air of Boston, MA.  It’s not like this in the South.  Stepping down from the bus onto the black pavement, I look up at the hotel in which I would be living for the next five days.  It resembles a castle.  No ordinary castle, but one of those picturesque, impervious fortresses in the lush fields of rural Scotland.  Over the entrance to the main lobby hang a decorative coat of arms; a symbol, I like to think, for the dedication I and my fellow musicians put into preparing the music for competition.  The heavy, stony blocks of the “castle” round off at the corners of the building into fashionable turrets that loom over the adjacent highway, keeping guard.  

Entering the lobby, I feel a sense of intense nostalgia.  I do not live or ever have lived in a castle; I have never even toured one.  Somehow, though, the massive, wooden support beams arched over the gleaming coats of armor and mottled, intricate carpet, well, take me back.  I am no longer in the twenty-first century but Tudor England.  An England of which the haughty Oliver Cromwell might even approve.  Vivaldi’s Cantabile or Handel’s Larghetto sound from the corner by a tight, pleasant chamber orchestra.  I expect to see Catherine of Aragon float in over the reflective marble all in a fuss over “royal matters.”  Hold on a minute. “I’m not insane,” I reassure myself.  “Stop this nonsensical day dreaming so I can play well in the competition!”  And with the solid, gentle closing of the elevator doors, the royal court of England remains entombed in the lobby.  

I kid, of course.  Why would I let something so marvelous simply vanish?  There remains, though, a balance of this English illusion and the reality of the competition.  Life, I feel, must harbor a similar, delicate dichotomy: not of Tudor England and a band competition, naturally, but of enjoying the complexities and pleasure of imagination while still realizing sometimes that that mountain of schoolwork over there isn’t going to do itself.

If you could have one super power what would it be and why would you want it?

I love this question.  In fact, one of my favorite television shows is Heroes in which all of the abilities are incredibly interesting.  However, if I had to choose, it would be between telepathy and the ability to manipulate space/time.  Telepathy would probably be the most useful in day to day life, yet also the most overbearing.  I suppose it would depend on the nature of the telepathy — would to be able to shut out thoughts when I didn’t want them?  It has many practical applications: police work/interrogation, private investigating, etc.  As far as space/time manipulation, this ability, in the long term, would be the most useful.  I could stop any event in time and even change it for the better.  Or the worse.  I could visit the past or the future.  Think of all the possibilities!

Find a picture that is an Epic FAIL. Explain why the picture fails.

Grammar fail.  I don’t know what’s gotten into the masses recently, but where has proper grammar gone?  Every time I see a grammatical error in plain sight, my faith in humanity diminishes.  If one subscribes to speaking or writing a language, isn’t in the interest of that person to learn the intricacies of speaking or writing it properly?  The rules of syntax are clear, yet, when those rules are broken, your meaning is not.  And in some cases, it can be horribly (or hilariously) misconstrued.

Now, I do understand that grammar is a rather superfluous discipline on which to harp when one considers the ‘big picture.’  OK, that split infinitive or comma splice isn’t going to kill anyone … AIDS, starvation, or dehydration surely might though.  

There are certain forums in which proper grammar is not necessary.  Informal writing, e.g. a blog post, is a prime example.  However, when grammatical failings make their way into academic writing or, even worse, public displays and signage, the linguistic part of my heart irreparably rips in ‘twain.