Brian's quite remarkable blog of wonder.

I like this poem:

When I Was One-And-Twenty

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

-Alfred Edward Housman, 1896


(...'Tis indeed true.)

Here's how to find out exactly how pathetic you are: use mapquest.com to get driving directions from the place you were born to the place you currently live. My particular case is a tragic one indeed.

Total Est. Time: 2 minutes Total Est. Distance: 0.48 miles


Today I spent three hours calling numbers, reading classified ads, browsing the internet, and walking around town looking for a place to live next year. I'm getting really tired of this.

Then I spent three and a half hours at work. It was raining and rush hour traffic was abnormally bad.

Then I spent three hours at the music building, A) practicing my viola for the audition I have tomorrow for admission to the School of Music, B) practicing the piano part to Mirth and Hilarity, and C) working on composing those piano waltzes I've been talking about. It is going to be a suite of five waltzes. I've now completely written one of them, and have basic themes for the rest of them sketched out. It's cool. I wish I could work faster.

AMBER BOCH: You're more likely to be laughing at
people, not with them. You're a bit moody -
sometimes you would rather go out and have fun,
and sometimes you'd rather be left alone with
your beer. You consider yourself an
'intellectual' smart ass, and you take an equal
pride in the beer you drink.


The Greatest Beer Quiz, ever!
brought to you by Quizilla


Hmm, I guess that sounds about right, although I've never had Amber Bock before.

Speaking of which: today I bought some beer at Hy-Vee and did not get carded (I almost never do, though I have been old enough to buy alcohol for only about nine months), but immediately thereafter at Mr. Movies I did get carded for renting an R movie (I have been old enough to rent R-rated movies for four YEARS and nine months). People must look at me and figure that I'll be mature enough to handle alcohol, but not mature enough to handle the ideas and concepts raised by R-rated movies. Which is hilarious, because pretty much the opposite is actually the case.

So one of the movies I got (not the R one) is The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. I remember watching this movie many times as a kid and being really inspired by it; fortunately it proved to be just as inspiring upon this evening's viewing. It's one of those movies that was good when you were a kid and is actually still good when you grow up, like The Muppet Movie. And it's always weird watching something as a cultured adult, realizing, "Hey, it's Eric Idle! It's Uma Thurman! It's Robin Williams!" My only gripe is that the big waltz melody in the score and in the end credits is stolen, lock stock and barrel, from the "Progulka" from Prokofiev's semi-obscure Children's Music Op. 65. There's generally a hell of a lot of plagiarism in the film scoring business.

It's been a cool weekend. Danny is back from California. Christer did come here yesterday after all, long enough to eat pizza at Pagliai's. Aaron is back from CalTech. His parents are so good to us... every time he comes back to town his folks invite all of his friends over for dinner.

And his dad just gave me a free monitor. It's 17", huge by my standards. Simply vast. What a world! I've always designed my webpages so they look good at my piddly 600x800, and now I'm realizing that I really need to redesign brianlenth.net for real people with larger resolutions.

Later this week I should be getting my tax refund, and there are rumors on the internets that it'll be over $900. And tomorrow I'm getting an abnormally large $397.72 paycheck. I'll be eyebrow-raisingly rich in a matter of days. Ice cream's on me!

I'm going to buy a new computer with these funds. My computer-loving friends are very excited about this, probably more so than I. But yeah, it's definitely going to be nice.

In other news: I'd like to do a comics adaptation of John Cheever's short story The Swimmer. I'd LIKE to. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm GOING to. But I have some great ideas for it.

I'm bummed. Chris was supposed to come to Iowa City today, and we were going to dine and talk about music. But there was a blizzard in Minnesota that prevented this. Curse you, old man winter!

I wouldn't have had any money to buy food anyway, as I am literally broke right now. I got a little carried away on amazon.com this week. Things I bought: 1.) A huge 12-DVD set of old cartoons, for a mere $20. 2.) Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints, the only Simon album I don't have. They've marked the occasion of the completion of my Paul Simon collection with a series of remastered re-releases of his albums with additional tracks, damn it all, so maybe I'll have to buy them all again. 3.) Roxy and Elsewhere by Zappa and the Mothers. I've been obsessed with Frank Zappa lately, but still haven't heard any live stuff. Until now! 4.) The soundtrack to Really Rosie by Carole King. None of my friends remembers this incredibly awesome 1975 TV movie that was such a big part of my childhood. Nor does any of them even seem to know the name Maurice Sendak.

Speaking of Maurice Sendak, Oh god do I want this.

Yesterday I took a nap at 6 PM. I ended up sleeping until 8 AM, interrupted once by a phone call at 11. That was weird.

Today I went to KSUI's "Know the Score" program at the art museum. The guest was my longtime musical hero Peter Schickele. Afterwards I talked to him. It was really cool.

I finally finished Chris's clarinet and piano piece. It's around 6-7 minutes, and it has the working title "Mirth and Hilarity" but I think I'm going to change that. Really descriptive titles tend to detract from my enjoyment of classical pieces for some reason.

Anyway, Chris told me he's planning on performing AND recording it at St. Olaf sometime this semester, with a competent pianist. I'm really excited about this.

So I'm sitting around at the Cambus office the other day, waiting to drive my bus. I'm thinking about Jack Kerouac for some reason or another. Then a coworker, out of the blue, says to me: "Hey, have you read On The Road by Jack Kerouac?" Is he psychic? More likely explanation: he gave a cursory glance to the book I had with me, Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, and thought the author's name was the sort of similar-looking Jack Kerouac. Weird, though.

Speaking of Jack Kerouac, though, the infamous original manuscript of On The Road, which is one huge scroll of paper, is on display right now at the U of I Museum of Art. I haven't read the book (to answer the earlier question), but I'd like to now because this exhibit has piqued my interest.

ALSO speaking of Jack Kerouac, I'm downloading a song by Rusted Root called "Jack Kerouac." Freely and legally, from the incredible www.archive.org.

I finished reading Riven Rock. It was kind of uninteresting as a story, actually. I was a little disappointed, because it seemed like it was chugging along and building up at times... to no avail. I could tell it was exhaustively researched, like anything that comes out of T. C. Boyle, but it didn't add up to a really arresting story (especially for as long as it was). That said, though, I enjoyed it immensely, because it was basically just playing around for a while in the first couple decades of the 20th century, a time period I'm in love with. I should read other TCB novels.

I also finished White Noise. Wow. I've never read such an intelligent treatment of modern life. Very frightening stuff. I actually had a very disturbing dream that there was a lethal chemical cloud that I had been exposed to. I guess that means I liked the book.

Now I'm reading John Krakaur's equally disturbing but hilarious book about Mormons, Under the Banner of Heaven.