A link of interest to all.

Ok two interesting links.

The first is a fun little webpage/video game where you get to defeat the evil Bush administration. Its long but well worth it.

The second is an amazing article from the Sunday New york Times magazine about high school kids and "hooking up". Appearantly sex or sexual activities are occuring among teens today at the same rate in suburban america as they did in gay bath houses during the 70's. I don't consider myself prude, but this article was a bit shocking. This too is long but worth the read.

I found what I think is a fairly interesting web site. At fundrace.org you can look at maps of the country by zip code and area code to see how much is given to Kerry or Bush. You can also look at some cities and even see how much is given from certain addresses. But the real kicker is you can search by address or last name for people who have contributed.

So, in case some of you haven't heard the news, I will be leaving May 27th to do an internship with the Pittsburgh Symphony and I'll be returning August 7th. I'm sure I'll have some fun blogs about Pittsburgh life and the orchestra...

But that's not what this blog is about. I would like people to post songs which they would like explained. These are songs we all know, but they either make no sense or we feel like there is some message or story that we're just not getting. So, the songs I'd like explained, for now, are...

Joy to the World by Three Dog Night
Mr. Roboto by Styx
Purple People Eater by Ray Stevens
99 Red Ballons by Nena Hagen (is it really about nuclear war?)
Come Together by the Beatles (come together over me? what?)
I Am the Walrus by the Beatles (just drug induced nonsense?)
Hotel California by the Eagles (is it a whorehouse? or haunted?)
Blister in the Sun by Violent Femmes
Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard by Simon and Garfunkel

...OK, all for now, although I had a great one for this category the other day and now I forgot.

i think everyone acknowledges the absurd multiplicity of bottled waters. they are all from this or that pristine spring in poland or france or antarctica, even though most are really from new jersey. today my boss john introduced me to a new level of water-insanity, oxygenated water.

the particular brand he brought in to share is called "hiOsilver Oxygen Water." According to its label, it is spring water turbOcharged with PURE OXYGEN. Enhanced with 10 times the oxygen of ordinary water, hiOsilver suppsedly improves metabolism, enhances athletic performance, and freshens breath. indeed, it is "so unique, it is patented."

hmm... you can check it out at www.hiosilver.com.

i dont recommend buying it, though, because it tastes like regular water, and costs $2.00 for a 12 ounce bottle.

so i know i haven't been around much. things to do, you know. papers to write, books to shelve, etc etc. but really, it's my fault. oops.
anywho, my comeback entails a story (as if there were any other way to return). because of my mass email, most of those reading this site have been notified about my new telephone number. finally, after almost a month, you can call me, and i can call you. i received my new phone yesterday afternoon, after one faulty delivery and much more rigamorole and waiting. excited, i made one celebratory call, just for the sake of making a call, and then took the phone to work with me to charge and program it.
first i put in all your phone numbers. well, most of them. then i started playing with the sound options. on several occasions, what i can only guess to be the first four seconds of Outcast's "Hey ya" echoed throughout the John Crerar Library atrium. after realizing that sound options were perhaps not the best setting to tweak in such an atmosphere, i moved on to security settings. apparently some people are very worried about someone else using their phone. my phone, for example, has three different passwords to remember: the PIN, which must be entered each time you turn the phone on again; the voicemail password (i assume most everyone has used this); and the PUK number. first of all, i dont know why Cingular decided to call this the PUK. could they not devise a more appealing acronym? in any case, i don't really know what the point of the PUK is. you need it to change your PIN, but why cant they just give you a PIN to go with the phone? how many goddamn codes must we remember? it's just a phone. in a year it will be outdated and nobody will want to steal it anyway.
moving on... not knowing at this point the facts about PINs and PUKs, i attempted to change my PIN to something new, also not really knowing what my PIN was in the first place. however, by figetting around with the phone, i managed to send it into something like code-red lockdown. thinking it must have been stolen from me in one of Hyde Park's all too common spring-summer transition muggings, the phone demanded my PUK. it would not yield until i gave it my PUK, offering me only two options: "Ok," meaning i have entered the correct PUK and would like to proceed; and "SOS."
so i am sitting at work in the library, with a phone i had only managed to make one call on, and which was demanding of me something i simply could not give. distraught, i clicked on "SOS" and then immediately hung up; i could figure this thing out better at home. best wait a few hours and then use "SOS" to call customer service and brief myself on the rules of cellular acronyms and their associated security codes.
however, at home i realized i was unclear about yet another acronym. when i got inside the apartment, i opened my phone and clicked on the SOS option. expecting a customer service phone tree on the other end of the line, i was quite surprised to hear, "Chicago Emergency." immediate response: shit. i kept thinking about being told that if i called 911 and hung up someone would come to my house to check it out. images of cops sugared-up on Dunkin Donuts and Togos sandwiches yelling angrily at the door came to mind. not pleasant.
luckily, the 911 opperator was quite nice. i got the feeling she was laughing at me, probably because i was apologizing profusely and mumbling something aboout the buttons on my cell phone. but i got the feeling that i wasnt the first to do it. thanks, Cingular. what's up with those Ok and 911 options? do they expect the person who steals your phone, having a hard time figuring out the PUK number they can reenter their own snazzy and easy-to-remember PIN number, to give themselves up by accidently calling the cops instead of customer service?
i know they give you options like that so that, should you be getting mugged at that precise moment, you CAN call 911. but come on, cant they think of a less ambiguous acronym? SOS? what about plain old 911? after all, it's the same everywhere. in any case, i think i'll close with another question, a bit unrelated to the above string: did i really call 911 to the library the first time when i hung up?

Read the De Vinci code yesterday. It is interedting and obviously addictive. I couldn't put it down, for only the second time in my life I read a book straight through. Though in the end I am not sure who I was rooting for...

Funny story to share from San Diego. I am here starting work on arranging John's estate. In the process there is so much to get rid of, like cloths. Bruce suggested I donate them to a thrift store. Good idea!

So I go through John's closet, put said cloths in bags, and head off to the thrift. When I return Bruce asks if I have already been to the Thrift. He is concerned because appearantly i had just donated all of his underwear.

We returned that afternoon to reclaim the donation. (On a side note: the phrase "indian Giver", is that degrading to native americans or the whites?)

So my friend and uncle John died last week. Most of you know that. What I wanted to share was the ceremony and weekend. My other uncle Jim arranged a great ceremony where I spoke as well as my aunt Nancy. I nice reception followed with family and friends of John. But the best part was the burial. We had John cremated. Over 30 years ago my grandmother was also cremated and has been sitting in my mother's basement since. We decided it would be nice to disperse them together in the ocean. I thought this would be simple.

We headed to a pier in Oceanside. The pier was quite full. We all wore John flower shirts and walked to the end of the pier. At the end a discussion ensued exactly how we would to this. You see its illegal to dump human remains in the ocean. People argued talked etc. Finally i said that we needed to get on with this. So we had a moment of silence. After what seemed like forever, I said ok lets go.

I pulled John from his bad and dumped him. Well I pictured sand but a cremated body is more like ash. A great ploom of body was created. A lady behind us screeched "Whats that?" I said sand. Andother man said "yeah right" John driffted to the water and created a very visiable white spot on the water. In a moment that diapated. But now we have Freckle (John's mother).

Jim rightly notes we need to just drop her in the urn. Seth opens the bottom so she will be free to drift. I lift the urn over the edge. Note by now, Nancy and Staci have turned their backs and started to talk in order to fein cover. I drop Freckle. No plum but when the granite urn hits the water... BAM and SPLASH!!!! The noise was huge!

After a moment of refelection we ran before the cops showed up.

I had to write this down somewhere before I forget. I just had a rather meaningful experience and I want to remember it.

I just finished my last UA Orchestra concert. I'll still play in groups, perhaps something this summer, but I really don't know when the next time will come that I'll play in a full symphony orchestra concert. The horns kicked ass, as did the whole orchestra; really top-notch playing. Afterwards, my horn professor came backstage, shook my hand, put his arm around my shoulders and as we looked at the now empty stage, said "I hope you always get to play things that great."

I do too.