Such Strident Sounds

"Now everyone, I want you to sing 'ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ' on this note, followed by a hard, harsh 'SSSSSSSSS'."

180 tongues that were all slightly too close to each other for comfort but were still spread evenly throughout the large choir room tilted upwards towards the top front of the respective mouths that housed them, leaving a small slits of space through which gusted 180 streams of air.

All the ones with perfect pitch exchanged the compulsory look of disgust implicit with every note the choir sang.  I caught three faces disgusted by duty and effectively trounced their disgust with my far greater disgust, and felt embarrassed to be a human being.  

The letter S, by far the most common letter used in the English language, denotes an alveolar fricative.  Its sounds is an odious, hair-straitening hiss.  The alveolar fricative is the most common consonant in every single language in the world except certain Aboriginal Australian languages.  

The S sound has an uncanny ability to bring out all of my contemptuous feelings; it is a conceited, omniscient letter.  Every person has a uniquely distinct S.  My first judgement of a person's character will come from the way he or she annunciates the S.

There is a hierarchy of categorization for s-types.

At the top comes the major distinction:

Dry and Fluid.

Dry and fluid do not describe the physical attributes of the S; rather they describe the tone.  

Fluid S's are like well oiled hinges.  They are clear and sharp.  People with fluid S's tend to air on the side of being egotistical, or are simply sloppy in speech.  Fluid S's can hiss like the sound a faucet makes when a little water is coming out. 

Within the broad category of fluid S's are more specific classifications.

Dominant Fluid S's: Most often belonging to people with sloppy annunciation, these S's govern ones speech like King Jung-Il governs North Korea.  All I can hear when talking to a person with a Fluid Dominant S is "S".  It is a loud S and is not forced; it simply encroaches.  

Forced Fluid S's: These S's are forcibly inserted.  They are usually loud and obnoxious and indicate loud and obnoxious people.

Recessive/Controlled Fluid S: This S signifies restraint and control.  It is slick but not overly oily.  It is audible but not overpowering.  It is the best S-type possible to have.

Saliva-Enhanced Fluid S's: Very unattractive.  

Dry S's: Dry S's do not flow like fluid S's.  They are choppier and more metallic.  

Forced Dry S's: A horrible, horrible S-type, this never fails to make me shiver.  It is a forcibly inserted, loud S.  It is metallic and hissy.  It hisses like pressurized air escaping from a small opening.  

Saliva-Enhanced Dry S: These S's usually insinuate a discharge of more spit than their Fluid counterpoints.  

Recessive Dry S: This is the only S that does not immediately stick out to me.  It is not a good S, but neither is it a bad S.  It does not flow, but does not take over one's speech and gently fills the space between its surrounding sounds.

Controlled Dry S: Controlled dry S's do not exist naturally in nature; they are brittle yet the speaker forces them to be as close to fluid as he or she possibly can.  A person with a controlled dry S invariably has a large ego and expects an unwarranted amount of attention.  

A few more varieties are the SH s (or the McCain S) where the S becomes a hybrid letter, slightly in between S and SH (these people tend to be overly anal); additionally there is also the radio S, where a person's normal S sounds like it is coming through a low-quality radio speaker.  The 'TH' S is essentially an excessively dry S.

S is the ultimate letter of gossip.  In quiet speech it carries the farthest.  It tantalizingly hints at secrets you will never know.  It is intimidating.  A well-placed S slaps you in the face as hard as a fast-moving palm.  It is seductive.  It's mysterious powers can send guttural, shivering warmth and create a blind pull. 

It has so much power.

Sso much power.

Ssso much power.

Sssso much power. 

Limbs sticking out at ridiculous tangents from widely overgrown bushes encroach upon a view so familiar that it coats my eyes like burn-in on a plasma screen.  The street, covered by allergy inducing grains that blend into the angled rays of sunlight, curves off to the right and slopes downwards.  A bird blasts out a D flat.  The even, white sound of automobiles cruising down Schraalenburgh Road in the distance is therapeutic, and only disturbed by the angry neighbors uttering grievances to each other in some Asian language.  I think it's Korean.

A few moments pass.

Then I notice that the chirping is no longer coming from neighbors, but from birds chasing each other in the driveway.  My eyes stray to the basketball hoop, unused for almost four years.  It looks out of place, unwanted, like the hideous cell tower on Terrace Street. 

An annoying humming sound, a D, comes from within the unruly bush from an indefatigable insect.  

A red toolbox sits at my feet.  It has been in the same place, on the same porch, for the past eleven years.  Inside are worm corpses, all that remains of my first pets.

The weather monitor pole rests on the ground, having fallen over nine months back in a thunderstorm.  

It will remain in its current position for nine more months.

And nine more after that.

And nine more after that.

Until the green paint wears off and the wood rots and the plastic contaminates the plants and another storm breaks it in half again.

A vase of dead sticks glints at me through the window.  I once helped peel some of the sticks.  I once thought they were beautiful.

I am four fifths finished serving my time at this nostalgic, comfortable, unchanging prison. But it is more of a graveyard than a prison.  I am the last surviving convict. 

Conspiracy (It's manipulating most of us sublimely and all of us dissonantly)

Four hours and sleep didn't even need to be evasive; it was being completely shut out by something.  The something was demonstrating itself in the form of a throbbing pain going from my ears to the back of my head, making my skull clatter and shake, and then creating shivers all the way down my spinal chord.  It was making bile rise from my stomach and produce a bitter, acid-like taste in the back of mouth.  It was making my toes curl and my fingers twitch.

But I couldn't figure out what it was.

I was not under any excruciating mental nor physical discomfort, and my bladder was not the cause of the distress.  

For a half an hour I rejected every option that I could brainstorm.  I then tried to improvise a symphony in my head so that perhaps the barrier between sleep and me would be weakened,  if not punctured.  The key, I decided, would be B flat major.  

I started with a B flat in my head, and all of a sudden I felt like a knife had cut off one of my testicles, and I realized the cause of my problem.  I burst upright and listened to the two fans humming together.

They were B flat.  

The fan above me was slightly flat.

The fan diagonally to the left was slightly sharp.

"Oh, the joy of having perfect pitch," I thought as I stood up, ready to bash both fans with the nearest stick-shaped object.  But a thought-provoking idea maybe me sit back down.

The reason for this was obvious.  It was intentionally done by the manufacturer of the fan (duh) so as to irk the unsuspecting customer to the point of their mental stability being challenged.  Then the evil corporations could lure the unwary customer in by posting propaganda, thus giving the corporations the power over the masses.

A (more) useful application of Mathematics.

The bridge between mathematics and humanities is more like two thin ropes with planks of wood suspended over a fiery pit of molten lava than the George Washington Bridge.  The Land of the Humanities is brimming full with wandering, philosophical explorers in whose language the word "answer" is vulgar. On the other hand, the Land of Mathematics houses a meticulously arranged society in which each citizen has an indefatigable routine, is designated a specific area to live in, and has a specific and limited job; in the language of the Mathematicans, the word "ambiguous" is vulgar (and its utterance is punishable by law.)  

So it is apparent that the two worlds are quite separate.

But I've found a way to connect them.

While studying the graphs of some basic, algebraic functions, I realized that they accurately illustrate different types of people.

Linear Functions: 

 

First are the linearists.  The graph of a linear function is simply a line; thus, the types of people it represents tend to be extremely organized (mentally and physically), have a wondrous amount of common sense, and are very level-headed.  However, they're also boring, uncreative, and don't take risks.  They strive for strict order; any disturbance in the linear qualities of their life are unwanted.

Quadratic Functions:

Next are the Quadraticists.  Quadratic functions are cup-shaped and either open up or open down, forming beautiful parabolas.  These

 people tend to be very graceful; when they set their mind on doing something they can stick to their goals.  However, they also understand when enough is enough and can return to the starting point as gracefully as they travelled from it. Quadraticists are less stable than Linearists.  They go through periods of highs and lows, but always rebound.  Their phases are long and intense, but always end.

Polynomial Functions:

Polynominacs are spontaneous and creative.  They have intense, short obsessions.  They have many different moods and have sharply curvy but still graceful personalities.

Exponential Functions:

Exponential Growtheners:  These people are usually very hardworking and lucky.  They are the people start out with a good idea and turn it into a worldwide phenomenon.  

Exponential Decayeners:  These people manage to waste away being in a favorable position.

Rational Functions:

These people will give all that they have for their (usually not so innovative) ideas.  Their sheer willingness to carry out what their dreams makes them bendy, not brittle.  They will go to extremes to see that their ideas become a success.  However, as close as they get, there will always be an asymptote right on the axis that would provide them with success.  As soon as they give up with one thing, they move right on to the next one.

Sin functions:

Siners are the most unstable type of people.  They tend to be extremely disorganized, go from high to low to high to low to high to low, and never manage to carry out anything they attempt to do.

I would have to say that I am a polynominac.  I have intense obsessions that tend not to be permanent.

A little common sense, and let simple economics dictate the rest.

As a high school student, I find it pretty hard not to notice the large, standardized tests encroaching more and more upon our lives.  High school is saturated with examinations.  Because of 'No Child Left Behind,' my school implemented midterms and finals for the first time this year.  The only thing these dreadful abominations accomplish is wasting an entirely usable month of the year.  The tests are a detriment to the success of our educational system; they sap up much of the time that could be spent learning new things or more thoroughly covering topics.  Furthermore, they encourage cramming.  According to Professor Thomas H. Mentos, author of The Human Mind, we quickly forget all the information that we cram; after 30 days, only 20 percent remains.  

I made a rough attempt at tallying up all the hours a student may spend during high school taking and studying for midterms and finals.  Assuming that five hours are spent studying for each test and that five midterms and five finals are taken, 50 hours are spent studying each year.  If each test is an hour and a half, that adds 15 hours.  Thus, 65 hours are spent on midterms and finals each year.  Multiply that number by four and you get 260.  

If one were to get a job at minimum wage in New Jersey (which is or will soon be 7.25 $ per hour) and work 260 hours, the result would be a wage (with 1/3 deducted because of taxes) of 3,380$.  A smart student would put the $3,380 in the bank and save it for retirement, because 3,380 dollars being in a savings account with 5 percent interest for fifty years would end up being $38,759.81. 

Hmmm.  I know what I'd rather be doing.

The Sarcasm Mark.

Punctuation has faithfully served us for over 2,900 years.  In the beginning, punctuation was simply points and slashes denoting where the reader should pause and for what length. Since then, it has evolved into something much more standardized and complicated.  Punctuation is as necessary to our society as testicles are to functioning male reproductive organs.  Living without punctuation would be a little like trying to climb up a polished granite, completely vertical, even surface.  It would be impossible.

Today, we have the wonderful question mark which creates an informational vacuum, the explanation point for eloquently and simplistically stating excitement, the colon for adding a suspenseful pause, and many more.  Almost all key verbal intonation can be recorded in writing by use of punctuation.  The system works, in most cases, so that what is written can easily be interpreted. 

However, there is one important feature in verbal speech which can not be notated in written speech.  Sarcasm.

Sarcasm, considered to be the joke of choice for the intelligent, confuses enough people even with pronounced verbal clues.  With no verbal clues it poses a significant challenge not only to the gullible or common senseless, but to the average person with over-average brain capacity.  Thus, I propose a new mark that will complete our punctuation system: the sarcasm mark.  (~) The mark shall close off any sentence with sarcastic inclinations. The sentence: "I really love doing homework," could be quite ambiguous, even to a logical person.  It could mean that the speaker is either somewhat nerdy or being sarcastic.  However, adding the sarcasm mark would make it unmistakable: "I really love doing homework~"

Yeah, punctuation really isn't important~

A Divine Decision (because the words "divine" and "nonsense" are synonyms in my mind)

I felt betrayed; betrayed, heartbroken, depressed, weary, and fatigued, but mostly shocked when Desperate Housewives went religious.

Desperate Housewives, a show about sex, money, gossip, greed, secrets, and everything juicy has no right to dive into the dirty depths of religious propaganda.  In fact, beginning every show is a sexually inclined image of two iconic figures in Western religion: Adam and Eve.  I admired "Desperate Housewives" for consistently making fun of the divine: it portrayed Carlos and Garbiel Solis's comical attempts at becoming better people, and captured a struggle between an extremely religious mother and her son's homosexuality.  

That is why I was caught so off-guard by the decision of Lynette Scavo, the show's most un-religious character, to begin a pursuit of the pulpit, and the unusual manner in which the show treated her self awakening.  Lynette, after fighting off cancer and hardly surviving a catastrophic tornado, decides to enrich her spiritual life and become closer to the "big man."  The scene during which she reveals this decision to her family shows all of Wisteria Lane's residents dressed up in formal Sunday attire and going as families to church.  All of a sudden, Lynette's living room is shown: her husband is in a corner drinking a beer and her kids are being rambunctious.  The television is on full blast.  Her household is successfully made to look morally inferior to the other households on Wisteria Lane.

Lynette Scavo morally inferior?  Then what explains her risking her life to save her neighbor's cat (and ending up saving herself and the neighbor)? What explains her 24/7 indefatigable devotion to her kids and her family?  Lynette is one of the most selfless people on the show.

Lynette suddenly converts from a realist to a believer of the untrue.  She is so overwhelmed by her bout of good luck that she abandons all reason.  She was once my favorite character; now I consider her weak.  

The show takes two different ideas: compassion and religion, and merges them into one.  But religion is not compassion, nor is compassion in the least religious.  Anyone, regardless of their faith or if they have a faith, can be a good human being.  In fact, being a good human being for the sake of being a good human being would appear more compassionate than being a good human being because it is what a faith mandates. 

TIRED.

I live my life constantly breathing in the indefatigably putrid breath of insomnia.  Insomnia rarely brushes its teeth.  Sometimes, it randomly becomes vain and eats a Wint-o-green lifesaver, which provides an equally strong but slightly better scent.  This usually allows for an hour or two of lucid sleep near dawn, sleep so light it can be considered a deep trance.  Since November of 2006, I have exceeded the critical mark of eight hours of sleep in one night a total of nine times (all before last September).  Over 80 percent of the time I don't even make six hours.  Around 40 percent of the nights I sleep under 4 and a half hours.  And about 30 percent of the nights I sleep 2 hours or less.

During the day, sleeping is impossible.  

So when people complain about how they get six hours every night, I balk.  

But as much as I hate insomnia, I love it also.  It has become an integral part of my life.  It gives me a wide array of valid complaints at the tip of my tongue for any situation dry in conversation ("I was up until 4 am last night!" "I'm tired" etc.).  Furthermore, my best essays come from 2 in the morning.  My imagination is on full force during the middle of the night.  While other people sleep, I plot ways to achieve world domination.

Losers.