Cliches and Couplets
Totally First-Person Free
Jack of few Spades, Ace of None. Can any card "suit" the sloth of this one?
Proper pronouns: "Wii," "Me," "I." To dodge them takes skill, but this one can try.
There is a level of "cuteness" that oft accompanies a young, budding pianist, especially if he shows competence. Even those who lack remarkable skill receive applause for their age, however, and this cheapens the effect of what the child actually produces.
Yesterday, a boy not over four feet in height assumed the stage at CAMSA's "Honors recital." He directly succeeded a girl of comparable size, who had thrice erred blatantly in a Beethoven sonatina. The boy, Kadar, followed the audience's indulgent applause with exaggeratedly kiddie bounce in his step. The comical childishness lingered as he sat, poised, before the six-foot-ten grand: not quite the keyboard of God that wa sthe nine-foot concert grand, but still far greater in appearance than its player. Then descended His fingers upon His Keys, and with them, a stunned silence upon the audience. Bach's Italian Concerto poured from the instrument with no audible flaw; the child proved more than equal to the fortress that He stormed with His hands.
It was way better than "cuteness."
But of course, mediocrity pervaded the recital as well, and in one case, total injustice to a piece. This one will not be hypocritical and pretend to have played Pathetique any better and will thus stem this one's unsolicited malevolence from the tongue or the pen.
The exterior of the building glowed a cheap neon in the dark grey rain. The interior partitioned space about as efficiently as a car engine. To the left was a sealed off staircase that ran menacingly into the wall, with what appeared to be a bottomless pit. The elevator up was narrow, caged, slow, and in the care of a very sincere-looking Mexican. The hall itself was stunningly unimpressive. The atmosphere of it was 71% carbon dioxide, 28% nitrogen, 1% oxygen. This one would much have preferred to be at Fenn School or Middlesex or Watertown. This one, in fact, did not ever actually see any of the recital. Whether the density of bodies similarly affected others' visual feeds was unclear, but a blind audience member listens poorly.
How To Tie A Tie (HTTAT)
1) Button the top button and pop the collar. Shed all doubts of heterosexuality: To wrap a long piece of silk around one's neck risks death, so risking looking gay is only a minor setback.
2) Grasp the two ends of the tie and use them to constrict the trachea, making sure to ensnare the popped collar in the process. Let the ends dangle asymmetrically.
3) Perform a swirling double loop thread-through backflip knot (known as the Heimlich maneuver). In laymen's terms: Conjoin the thumb and forefingers about the neck of the snake and have it fling itself around the shorter segment. Adjust the right digit, ring finger, and mandible, threading and restating the hypothesis. Dilute the piece in the left hand and pull it gently through the habeus corpus. Instigate the Bolshevik intelligensia and alert them of imminent Armaggeddon.
4) Surrender to the ultimate public humiliation and ask your father to teach you how to tie a tie the real way.
5) Form a solid knot by pulling on the long piece until the circumference of your neck is under 6.28 inches. This should elicit a grunt of a four-letter word. If it does not, tug harder. You have seven neckbones; if you can still swallow, then you did it wrongly.
This one has imparted all of his wisdom upon you now. Time for a graduation party.
SD
June 4, '06
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