almost? how does that work? a still pregnant sister?

actually, yes. that's exactly what it is.

i am an almost uncle

Yeah, Steve Reich is genius. If you guys like this take a look at his Piano Phase. It's basically a 12 note sequence played simultaneously on two pianos and, I don't know the exact mechanics but, every 8 bars (maybe 16?) or so, one of the pianos displaces itself back a note and it does it 12 times until it's back to where it started. I know an alternate way is for one piano to just play just the smallest bit slower (or faster) than the other, but I think that's actually much harder. Either way it's a really cool concept. Reich and all those minimalists basically started techno.

I went and saw The Dark Knight in IMAX last night since I missed it the first time around (yeah I'm the only person alive) and had only seen it on DVD. I then... proceeded to go home and watch it on DVD and today I watched it on DVD, and I'm probably gonna go watch it again. It's such a waste of my time but I love that movie unhealthily.

Last night I watched The Dark Knight, The Prestige, and American Psycho (yes, I had a Christian Bale-fest).

I want him on my dodgeball team.

So I am a senior in high school here in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and I decided that I wanted to go to college. So. Since about May, I've known that I really wanted to go to Penn (University of Pennsylvania right here in good ol' Philadelphia). So I decided, hey! I'll apply early decision. Early Decision, for those who may not know, means that you apply early (obviously), generally deadline is November 1 and the college gives you a decision by mid-December. Early Decision is binding, meaning you have to go there if you're accepted unless you apply for financial aid and it's not enough for you to attend (not to be confused with Early Action which means you just apply and it's not binding so you're not required to attend once accepted).

So, I sent in my application mid-October. I asked 2 teachers for recommendations (and due to some mail mix-ups, one didn't get there until about 10 days ago), sent my test scores, I had an interview, my parents filled out financial aid information, and on Tuesday, I received an email saying my decision would be available online at 3pm Friday (yesterday). So through a couple days' anticipation, yesterday afternoon finally came. I asked 6 of my closest friends to be there, 1 of which had detention and couldn't, but whatever. It ended up about 20 people crowding around the computer in the college guidance office. So, 3 o' clock comes 'round. F5 F5 F5 F5... LOG IN PAGE. So I logged in and lo and behold, I've been accepted into Penn! Cue celebration, right? You know, lots of hugs, my friends lifted me up and carried me down the hallway (I have weird friends), all great stuff. I come back into the office to thank my college guidance counselor and she looks at me and says, "You don't look very excited." And I was excited, it's just that... well, I went back and checked the financial aid they gave me. They gave me virtually nothing. Not nearly enough for me to go there. So I called a bunch of people, told lots of people that I got in and everyone was happy.

I went home, and today showed my dad the financial aid summary. He looked at it and told me exactly what I knew he would: that it wasn't enough. There was no way that my parents could afford to send me there with only that much.

So, what do I do? Conveniently and somewhat comfortingly, I have an ex girlfriend with whom I'm still good friends whose mom works there and said that generally if early decision accepted students call and you know, talk to the financial services people, and explain the case, they try to find a way to cover whatever difference there is. So on Monday, my dad is gonna call and see what he can do. But obviously that's not a sure thing. So what do I do if they don't give me any more? Penn is my top choice, I mean it's why I applied there ED. I really want to go there. I put a lot of work into applying there and I mean, I don't know what to do. Everyone else is much more excited about this than I am and I really can't enjoy it, because I mean, sure, it's a great accomplishment to get into an Ivy, but what good is it if I can't go there? It's really upsetting.

I don't know if anyone can help me, but maybe someone else has been in a similar situation. I'm willing to take out student loans and pay them back after college, but there's only so much I can take out. I mean it's just so much money and my family doesn't have the ability to pay it. I really want to go to Penn, but I also don't want to ask my parents to take on a burden I know is too much for them. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to anything and everything. In advance, I thank you for your help. This is really what I want to do and I'm willing to work for it and try to find a way to do it.

I saw this a while back and didn't like the idea but as an avid fan of the first I kinda have to see it, so I guess I'm kind of excited. The premise of a sequel is appealing to me, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Maybe it'll make sense.

Man what happened... a month or so ago, this girl that I know got with a guy who had a girlfriend and me and my friends were talking about it. I remember not really having an opinion but they said something like... it's the girl's fault, I think. If a girl comes onto a guy he's naturally gonna respond but girls have more sexual self control or some shit so if they seduce a guy and he has a girlfriend it's not his fault 'cause she did it to him or some shit. I can't really remember, but I don't think either way it's a great idea.

BTW: In your essay, if you decide you're getting tired of saying "The University of Pennsylvania" and want to shorten it, make sure you say Penn instead of UPenn. It doesn't particularly bother me either way, but some people get anal about the "U". The university officially endorses "Penn" only.

I knew that I just didn't want people to confuse me with applying to Penn State. 

I'm a high school senior as well and I go to a private college prep school, so people are basically like, if you go here, you go to college. So our college guidance center is pretty... good, I guess. But no one ever was just like, "Yo, you should start applying now." I just decided, hey I should start applying right now. I'm applying to 8 (maybe 7) schools: UPenn (early decision), Yale, Columbia (depending on how I do on my SAT IIs), Notre Dame, Rice, Ithaca, Boston U, and Westminster Choir College (part of Rider). I'm applying for music (weird for having 3 Ivy's on there, right?) but moreso for the academics of music, i.e. theory, history, composition.

I hate this. More than you could ever know, I HATE this. You know most of the time people are like, yeah, senior year's easy! I decided, oh I KNOW I WON'T MAKE IT EASY. So I decided to take 5 AP courses, apply early decision to a school, do 9 school activities (4 of which I run), continue piano/voice lessons, and apply to 7 other schools. I have essays piling up and my teachers are gonna kill me for giving them recommendation shit on like Monday when I need them to send it in like a week later. On top of that, I HATE the Common Application -- it is way too fucking restrictive and it's just a pain in the ass. Sometimes I wish I could just do paper applications, it would be so much easier and I could be like, well I actually GOT EVERYTHING DONE instead of worrying, OH FUCK WHAT DID I MISS?

As I'm writing this, I should be writing my National Merit essay, but I've been putting it off for weeks, mostly because I hate writing about myself. For UPenn, I've got to write so much shit and I can't stand it. This stupid arts supplement which I have to send in, I don't know whether to use 1 CD or 2, what to put on them. Meanwhile, I'm trying to perfect all my music for recording, I only ordered a good enough microphone tonight to which I ordered it to a nonspecific address because Paypal hates me. I'm overwhelmed, overstressed, and just wish I had the willpower to get stuff done.

Long story short, I hate applying to college too. Granted, I suppose I have it a little easier because I have people who know what they're doing helping me... if I ask. I just forget to ask sometimes and get overwhelmed like this. Anyway, I wish you the best of luck with all of your shit, God knows we all need it.

I should perhaps clarify. I'm a guy. (more of a baritone/bass but my upper range is sorta there and if necessary we can always transpose)

So my friend Phil and I are now seniors in our high school and we basically run the the music program. (He's president of the Jazz Band and I'm president of the Choral Group) Anyway at our concerts which are held tri-annually, our [crazy] music director gives people a chance to do solo stuff. So my friend and I work well in collaboration, we're a 2 man group and we're working on an album, and basically what my question is to you is, we need good music to go out with a bang. We have three concerts: one in October, one in December (Christmas), and one in May.

So Phil plays guitar and drums and I play piano and sing. If needed, Phil could sing a little (backup or lead emo haha) and I can strum myself a little backup guitar, but basically we stick with our strengths. I'm probably more piano and he guitar, but both my singing and his drums are pretty good. Granted, while I can play piano and sing at the same time, he cannot play drums and guitar at the same time. So what we're looking for is music with drums or guitar (acoustic or electric) with piano and/or voice. Voice is not necessarily needed and piano is not necessarily needed (though preferred).

In the past we've done songs such as:

State of Grace - Liquid Tension Experiment
Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (from the movie "Once")

And on our album we have covers like:

Fix You - Coldplay (where we double him into guitar and drums)
Under the Milky Way - The Church (a little unplugged)
Mad World - Gary Jules (a chilled remix with drums that was on the Donnie Darko soundtrack)
Brick - Ben Folds Five
Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
Dearly Beloved - Kingdom Hearts (epic drum remix)

So you're thinking well, why can't you do any of those? Well, Fix You requires doubling, Under the Milky way has no piano (which I would like), Mad World would be rejected by our ultra-Christian school for its lyrics as well as Hallelujah (in fact I tried to do the John Cale version last year and they were like NO). We don't really view Brick and Dearly Beloved as stuff we'd play by themselves, they need to be more in the presence of other things.

So anyway, we're looking for similar things. Remember: guitar (acoustic or electric) or drums with piano and/or voice. (if you must choose one choose piano but I enjoy singing and I think we sound better when I sing, it gives us a better feeling, I think). Any help you guys could give would be greatly appreciated!

So I've been taking the antibiotics my doctor gave me. (Plus some sort of mucus thinner he suggested) and I can sort of hear now. I mean it's not what it was, but it's a lot better and a lot less annoying. It seems when I go to sleep and wake up again it's back to where it was and takes a little bit to clear out but for the most part once I'm awake for a bit I'm okay. I think I'll go see the doctor again at some point if it persists in being like that when I wake up, but oh well. It's nice to have my hearing back!

So, about 5 days ago, I was routinely cleaning my ears out with a q-tip (I'm aware this is not the best way and often results in bad things, but I know that now) and apparently I had an excessive amount of wax in my ear. So as I was swabbing in my right ear, I suppose I must have pushed some wax and wedged it against my eardrum or something because I lost hearing in my ear. Well not entirely, but a large amount and I am for the moment heavily hearing impaired in my right ear, I can barely hear anything with it.

So this had happened to me back in May or something, and I scheduled an appointment with my doctor (just my physician) to check it out. I happened to talk to my brother who this had happened to when he lived in Italy for a year. The doctor there had told him to put olive oil in his ear and come back in a week and he would flush it. So he did that and it worked and he could hear again. So back in May, I did that. The whole olive oil thing, I went to the doctor, and he flushed my ear and I could hear wonderfully again. It was great and I was happy.

I scheduled a doctor's appointment the other day. So I went in there yesterday. And I hadn't had as much time as in May to use the olive oil as much as I did (3 days vs. 1 day or something). So I went in and he tried to flush my ear and it didn't work. I still couldn't hear. (in fact I think it may have gotten worse) So after further examination he told me that he thought there was fluid behind the eardrum and wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic. So I've been taking this medicine since yesterday (it's only a 5 day thing) and so far I have no improvement whatsoever. I think it may have gotten worse again.

So if this doesn't work, I'm gonna schedule another appointment and see what's going on, but I wanted to see if this has happened to anyone else. I'm interested to know what you've done about it and such. It is not fun at ALL to lose your hearing, let me tell you. I don't trust my physician too much (he's kinda crazy), so if anyone else has something that they did that worked for them, I'd be interested to know. It really bothers me for this to happen, largely because I don't hear too well anyway. I sit in classes now and try to figure out what is going on, heh.

I'm pretty sure this is only temporary. I don't see why it wouldn't be. But if it's not, I'm gonna be sad. Also, I wanna warn you guys, be careful with q tips. Those are dangerous mother fuckers. Anyway, help would be appreciated or similar stories, I know I can't be alone!

I'm a senior in high school now, but I'm applying to colleges for music in the academic sense, i.e. theory and history. Best case scenario of my life would be to do that, then get a masters and Ph.D (probably in music theory) and be a college professor and teach on the university level. If I get bored of that, I'd like to open a piano and/or voice studio and teach there.

UPRC has spent most of his life hacking a Super Mario World ROM, he'd be the man in the know.

Isn't there a program that lets you hack SMW and make your own levels and shit?

Hahaha AP is so worthless man. It is a huge waste of time.

I don't care if I do well in the exams, more likely than not I won't be able to use any credits I could get, but courseload is important for college admissions. I don't care about the AP grades so much as the fact that I'm taking the courses and that I do well in them.

I'm going into my last year of high school (thank GOD, it didn't come soon enough) and considering I plan on studying music in college I am taking some PRETTY unnecessary courses:

AP Calculus BC (I had originally signed up for AP Statistics but then was like aw hell, I'll take another year of calc!)
AP Physics C: Mechanics (that is, Physics with Calculus!)
AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism (again, Physics with Calculus!)
AP Chemistry
AP English Literature and Composition
Italian I (my easy course)
Philosophy and Christian Marriage (obligatory Catholic school religion course)

It's awful, I obsess over video game soundtracks. I used to have every Final Fantasy soundtrack EVER as well as all the other stuff that goes along with them, remixes and arrangements and piano collections and I loved every bit of it. I download sheet music to songs from games Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Kingdom Hearts, Maplestory (lolz), Zelda games (Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time esp.), Shadow of the Colossus, and the Final Fantasy series (specifically like IV, VI, VII, and VIII). But pretty much all of them I listen to all the time. They're on my iPod (I'm a loser I know) and recently I've REALLY been into the Shadow of the Colossus soundtrack. There are pieces that I just absolutely love. I dunno, I'm a huge fan of video game music and I pretty much just always have been. I'm listening to Chrono Cross right now actually... huh.