My computer printer is almost human

It doesn’t have arms and legs with which to walk around the room, and I would never ask it out on a date, but it does have one very human characteristic.

It talks to me.

Just this morning, as I was printing down the latest monthly statement of my checking account from my bank, the printer began saying, “That fool, that fool, that fool.” It was clear as a bell. I can only hope it was talking to me and not about me.

But then all of a sudden it seemed to be saying, “Pat Boone, Pat Boone, Pat Boone.”

I never know what the darned thing is going to say next. Last week it was chanting “Chickamauga, Chickamauga, Chickamauga” at me and sent my mind off in the direction of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) .

Another time I distinctly heard it say, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” and instantly I was transported to the death of Lady Macbeth and saw Birnam Wood moving towards Dunsinane Castle.

I kid you not.

I’m sure if you listen closely, you will discover that your printer is talking to you as well.

Let me know in the comments section what you have heard your computer’s printer say lately. I’d love to know.

The only question that remains is why my computer printer would be saying “Pat Boone, Pat Boone, Pat Boone.”

I don’t remember if I have told you this before, but our paths (Pat Boone’s and mine) crossed in the mid-1950s. Our school’s Future Teachers of America club had gone to a two-day district conference on the campus of North Texas State College (now The University of North Texas) in the town of Denton. There was a dance the first evening, and live music was provided by the college music department’s jazz band. The featured singer with the band that evening was none other than Pat Boone, who was a student there.

We actually breathed the same air. Yes, we did. So did Dick Clark and I in 1958 at American Bandstand in Philadelphia. I’m pretty sure I already told you about that.

This post and a small fortune could get me a room in a good psychiatric facility.

Not that I need one.

I am not crazy as a loon. Crazy, maybe, but not crazy as a loon.

Not yet.

P.S. - I looked through my archives and discovered that I have, in fact, already told you about crossing paths with Pat Boone back in the mid-1950s in this blogpost from November 30, 2012, which you should read, because it may convince you that I actually am even crazier than a loon.

Not that you need any convincing.

In which the author learns that not all ideas are good ones

This being my 1300th post and all, and fancying myself to be a musician of sorts, I thought I’d try to elevate the tone of the blog by incorporating quotations from classical composers.

Boy, was that a bad idea.

Shakespeare put these words into the mouth of Lady Macbeth:

“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.”
--from Macbeth, Act I, scene V

Lady Macbeth was wasting her time hanging around with the thane of Cawdor. If she had been married to a classical composer instead, she wouldn’t have had to worry about his nature being too full of the milk of human kindness.

Here are a few examples of things classical composers have said about one another:

1. “Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.” --Copland

2. “I like your opera -- I think I will set it to music.” --Beethoven

3. “What a good thing this isn’t music.” --Rossini on Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique

4. “He was a six and a half foot scowl.” --Stravinsky on Rachmaninov

5. “All you need to write like him is a large bottle of ink.” --Stravinsky on Messiaen

6. “It is the most insipid and base parody on music.” --Tchaikovsky on Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov

7. “It’s beautiful and boring. Too many pieces finish too long after the end.” --Stravinsky on Handel’s Theodora

8. “The musical equivalent of St. Pancras Station.” --Sir Thomas Beecham on Elgar

9. “Wagner has beautiful moments, but awful quarters of an hour.” --Rossini on Wagner

10. “A tub of pork and beer.” --Berlioz on Handel

11. “The audience expected the ocean. Something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer.” --Louis Schneider on Debussy’s La Mer

12. “He likes what is coarse, unpolished, and ugly.” --Tchaikovsky on Mussorgsky

13. “A composer for one right hand.” --Wagner on Chopin

14. "He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.” --Clara Schumann on Liszt

15. “All Bach’s last movements are like the running of a sewing machine.” --Bax on Bach

16. “What a giftless bastard!” --Tchaikovsky on Brahms

17. “Handel is only fourth rate. He is not even interesting.” --Tchaikovsky on Handel

18. “If he’d been making shell cases during the war it would have been better for music.” --Saint-Saëns on Ravel

19. “I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.” --Britten on Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress

20. “He’d be better off shoveling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper.” --Richard Strauss on Schoenberg

21. “Bach on the wrong notes.” --Prokofiev on Stravinsky

I’m really surprised at how these classical composers attack and devour one another. It’s almost enough to make me take up rock and roll.

I’m joking.

So much for attempting to elevate the tone of the blog.

Something certainly creeps in this petty pace from day to day, but it is not the milk of human kindness. That seems to have curdled long ago.

(Photo of St. Pancras Railway Station, London, 2012 copyright by User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0)