ALWAYS warm up

To those of you who think we musicians can just whip out our instruments and play anything, that is a LIE.
We MUST warm up.
This is why I don't like situations like the following:
(Neumanns go to someone's house)
(Someone has piano in house)
(Vicki forces Zach to play piano)
(Zach plays piano in a mediocre fashion because he is not warmed up)
With the piano, though, you can flex your fingers rapidly, and that helps, kind of.
No such thing for the trumpet.
It's when the young Taps-ers of the world NEED to warm up that the John Andersons of the world are making speeches, and you CAN'T warm up.
In case you didn't get it yet, I had to play Taps today for Memorial Day.
But I wasn't warmed up the first time around.
I didn't have a CHANCE to warm up.
So, it was AWFUL.
Even worse, I was at a Catholic cemetary, and the PRIEST was there.
I don't have a good handle on life, but I do know that you should NEVER anger a Catholic priest.
Scary.
Anyway, the SECOND time around, there was about a million people there.
My old piano teacher.
Mr. Armconnect.
A weird guy in a tie-dye shirt.
And I played it PERFECTLY.
Figures.

Why story?

I'm reading a book at the moment called "Three Genres," and I don't remember who it's by (some bald guy), but it's about poetry, fiction, and drama. Since I write fiction, and since there's poetry in fantasy, and since I might go crazy and become a playwright, I thought it might be an interesting book.
Swerving back to the point, I skipped the poetry section and went straight to fiction. In the fiction section, there are short stories, because evidently he couldn't get permission to print whole novels in there, and we do that on our own time, anyway. As I read this short stories, I thought, "WHAT was THAT?! There's no point at all!" (The most recent one was about a talking cat.)
This got me thinking: What's the point of a story, anyway?
Entertainment?
Humor?
Knowledge?
Deep Truths for Real Life?
Those are all good things, and they're all in stories, but that's not really the point. The point is to have a "Powerful Emotional Experience," to plagiarize author Randy Ingermanson. (Here, to make up for it, I'll give you a link to his website here.)
But why would we want THAT?
Well, probably because our normal, everyday emotional experiences are...boring.
The fact is, discovering that you left a dollar bill in your pocket is nice, but not nearly as nice as discovering the secret that will save all mankind from evil villany for the rest of eternity.
And when a character in a book does that (and the writer has done his job, and made you feel like you ARE the character), it excites you.
It makes you think you just discovered the Big Secret.
Maybe that's why we read. When I read, I feel like I'm the hero, which beats the tar out of YOU being the hero. You just don't get a chance to save the world every day, so you have to read a book that makes you FEEL like you just saved the world.
But what about the rest of the story? The Saving of Humanity doesn't come till the end.
Well, if you just read a sentence that said, "The bomb was about to go off. Then, he cracked the code and diffused it," you might be relieved that the bomb didn't explode, but on the other hand, who would have cared?
The point is, you have to have conflict. The more conflict there is and the higher the stakes are, the better it feels when the main character saves the world.
God didn't want us to be bored, so He gave us the desire the save the world, and people to write books so that we feel like we did.
That worked out rather nicely.
But what about the books without happy endings? What's the point of that?
Well, I suppose some people just like being depressed. After all, you watched Little House On The Prairie, too, and you liked it.
What's even more powerful than reading something that makes you feel like a hero, however, is writing something that makes you feel like a hero.
Or a villain.
Or a plant.
That's the beauty of fiction: None of it is true.
Since none of it is true, anything can happen, and when you use that realistically, you actually are a hero, because you've accomplished something, and you can get unholily wealthy off the idea.
Now that I have imparted my Novel Wisdom to you, what is the point of short stories?

Somberness

Today I wrote for half an hour, but it was a very serious, somber part of the book, and so I wrote less than one hundred words. I also had to make up some elvish, which took some time. I also was up till like midnight last night...

Spam=Stupid Pointless Annoying Monkeys

Today, I got interrupted a lot while attempting the play the piano. There's nothing wrong with that, except I get tired of it and just want to finish, so I rush (rush must always be italicized) through only what I have to.
So I don't get anything done.
Which, as this particular, is really bad.
I'm trying to learn Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody and Chopin's Revolutionary Etude.
For those musically uninclined among my vast audience, those are probably the two hardest peices in the WORLD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byGI1mDi3no
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zikmAirQqQ
There they are. Probably years ahead of my technique. I'll be stuck here forever...

Hoooooooooooooooooo

Wrote two whole pages today...and that's more than it sounds like. For those of you who don't regularly type for half-hours on Google Documents, that's a lot.

732 words, to be exact.

And, more than one epiphany.

And, plenty of suspense.

And, we're eating spaghetti tonight.

Break The Routine...

Today, I made a massive, gigantic, unbelievable, gigantic purchase.

I bought...


A HIGHLIGHTER.


Now, I'm sure you're all hyperventilating already, but let me amend that:


TWO HIGHLIGHTERS.


Obviously a wild day at the Neumann house.

It's So Hot Out...

On this delightful first day of summer vacation, while we where delicately dining on delicious doughnuts, I observed this curious snatch of conversation:

Joey: "Can I soundproof the doors and windows in my room?"
Mom: (not hearing) "Huh?"

There's got to be a term for this. I know it.


Also, I found this while working on the Library blog; a book called "Allosaurus vs. Brachiosaurus."

That's one battle you're not going want to miss.

Thirdly, today my while I was getting dressed, I discovered that my brother had hidden my borrowed bow tie.

In my shoe.

Needless to say, it was quite a sticky wicket finding it.

The Irony Of Life

It takes more calories to chew celery than you get from eating it.
That's kind of quixotic.
Kind of.

It's The Name That Counts

No one would read a blog that was called That's Kind Of Idiotic.

Or Neurotic.

Or Narcotic.

Or Hypnotic.

Well, maybe Hypnotic.

But not Antibiotic.

It's the name that counts.

Of course, none of you know what Quixotic means.

Let's take a moment to clear that up.

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I'm going to assume you looked it up by now.

Good work.