Lose Yourself in the Seeking of the Location?

"Hub."
"Hub? is that a city? Hub, utah?"
"Um, I don't think so, but that's what the sign says."

That's about how descriptive utah street signs are, if they say anything at all. We were out looking for a friend's house which, inconveniently, seems to be located in Lindon, I mean, what's wrong with Orem? Hub, by the way, seems to be some sort of code word for American Fork. We left at about 7:10 PM and the preceding conversation took place at about 8:30.

How did we manage to take more than and hour and twenty minutes to get to somewhere about ten minutes away? well, after thinking about it, it can only be concluded that it started with an overconfidence in the internet. mapquest to be more exact. After calling the aforementioned friend whose house it was, we decided to just check mapquest for how to get there, this was because of a previous statement the friend had made regarding the uselessness of having his address alone. it probably would have been simpler to have just paid enough attention to our surroundings to know where lindon was beforehand, but sadly, neither of us did. So mapquest was the perfect solution, just follow the directions and you can't go wrong can you? well, yes, you can.

Well, all roads don't actually lead to rome, as the adage says. Most of them actually lead to other roads, and some of them break certain laws of physics in jumping from 200 East to 1500 East AND alternating cities in far less than the implied distance. Such were the roads on which we travelled, a single road could travel hundreds of yards and switch from pleasant grove, to lindon, to orem, and then to pleasant grove again, with occasional stops in AF (a.k.a. hub), in about 35 seconds. After travelling on such roads for maybe an hour, my first rebellious thought came:

"Austin, why are we on 800 North when the address clearly says 80 South?"
"Ummm... well... mapquest said..."
"Screw mapquest, we're 8 blocks farther north than we're supposed to be, and and I don't watch star trek enough to understand this road at all."

Well, we went to 80 south, and after avoiding some more laws-of-physics-breaking roads, we finally found the house at about 9:10, mostly by luck, about 2 hours after we left. Interestingly, when I was going home (which did take about 10 minutes, by the way) I looked at my gas, and it said my tank was completely full. I'm afraid I'll never understand that one.

So How did all this happen? Some blame has to go to mapquest for telling us the wrong freeway exit, the wrong street, and for trying to make us find non-existent streets in "Lindon", then the rest of the blame must go to me, for not thinking of looking at the actual address until after about an hour and forty-five minutes of choosing the roads less traveled, and not knowing where lindon was in the first place. So it can only be concluded that I'm an idiot.

isn't that great?!?

So I don't know exactly what to write about, but I do know that I officially hate this font so it'll change pretty soon... here... well, that was prompt. Um, anyway.

Okay, so my brother says I should write about just how dumb primary piano books are, and, not being able to think of anything better, I guess that's what I'll write about.

So just opening up to a random song in "Bastien Piano Basics: Performance Level 1" I come across a piece called "Robots Marching". Okay, so first, it has this faded, unnatractive picture of of seemingly happy, fake looking, robot... things. we'll call 'em clown-bots, because they look more like clowns, than bots, er, robots. I mean, that right there makes me want to turn to a different page immediately, and maybe throw up if I have time. So this is what cutting edge robotic technology will become? a bunch of baby blue and pink clown looking things with big smiles pasted on their heads and hollow eyes? If so, I'm off to Amish-ville. But for the sake of the blog, I won't be swayed by just the picture, so on I trudge.

After the awful first impression, we go on to the second, I mean, don't judge a book by it's cover and all. This is where we get to the music. I mean, the robots were bad, so what? a song about robots has got to be pretty good right? no. Anybody who can listen to this music and envision marching robots, even the cheesy clowny ones, has got to be issues. or have issues, whatever. At best, I listen to this music, close my eyes, and see a bunch of washed out 17th century aristocrats at a boring party. You would expect a moving piece with minor undertones suggesting the imminent destruction of mankind by the means of their mechanical creations gone wrong, sorry, you're a beginner, you won't get to play stuff like that until you're twenty five and still living with your mom. The music is lighthearted and mostly made up of pieces of scales and the same chord over and over again in the bass. You can just imagine the poor robots dying of boredom. It doesn't even have a marching tempo. But then, the piece was beyond saving to begin with.

So this is what piano playing society is based on. Lies. Lies and a completely altered and boringed up image of our future in technology. And parents wonder why their kids don't like practicing piano. I hereby blame all my and everyone elses dislike of practicing on this book. right here. with an initial introduction like that, It's no wonder I've been biased against the instrument since I was seven!

the dawning of the fourth age

just checking to see if this is working, I just started this blog.... um.... testing, 123.